


Help! The Darkspawn Stole My Friends!

by midnight_marimba



Category: Dragon Quest XI
Genre: Act 3 spoilers, Comedy, Dramatic Irony, Faris and Mia in particular, Gen, Jasper Redemption, More characters to be added, a series of questionable life decisions, hints of luminerik, or at least I have amused myself, the B-team runs a mediocre spy operation, tying up loose ends
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-11-06
Updated: 2021-03-07
Packaged: 2021-03-08 20:27:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 33,169
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27422695
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/midnight_marimba/pseuds/midnight_marimba
Summary: I was in the can while the impostor showed up.The Luminary is strongest with his friends around him.  But when an apparently identical copy of himself shows up and runs off with all his companions, he’ll have to find other allies in the quest to reclaim his destiny.
Relationships: Hero | Luminary & Homer | Jasper (Dragon Quest XI)
Comments: 52
Kudos: 28





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Spoiler advisory: there will be great big Act 3 / postgame spoilers here.
> 
> Content advisory: there will be references to temporary character death, canon-typical / not very graphic violence, and probably unresolved pining.
> 
> This fic is unconnected to my other works. I'm publishing this with way less pre-written than I usually have for a longfic, so no guarantees on an update schedule.
> 
> I'd like to dedicate all the toilet humor in this work to Lou Stall, the beacon of elegance and efficiency that we all deserve.
> 
> If you're still willing to talk to me after that, feel free to drop me a note and let me know if this flavor of longfic is your thing.

I was in the can while the impostor showed up.

Look, even legendary heroes, if you can call me that, aren’t immune to Veronica’s cooking. For somebody who’s actually a grown woman, for someone who’s incredibly competent in every other area of her life, sometimes I wondered if her cooking skills got reset to six years old along with her age. But she takes it personally if you won’t let her take a turn making dinner, so once a week we gotta just let her make a Spicy Shrimp Surprise and live with the consequences.

Those consequences hit me right in the middle of the very important meeting with the wise old guy in Arboria’s most sacred building, and I didn’t want to announce the problem any louder than my rumbling stomach already was doing, so I just snuck out. I was completely certain the twins would let me know everything I missed, later.

I took a new smithing recipe in with me as a distraction from the suffering, and between that and the other business, I kinda lost track of time, and then when I headed back outside, I couldn’t find my friends.

I wandered around town for a little while, figuring I’d either run into them or they’d come find me sooner or later. I didn’t start to get really worried until it was well past lunchtime and I still hadn’t found them.

I finally started asking around. The first three people that I made eye contact with were ladies, and it was kinda awkward. 

“Luminary! You are here alone? Are things between you and the sages...well, perhaps just Serena...But are you not together after all? Perhaps...Is there a chance for you and I?” An older lady fluttered her lashes at me. I mumbled something and headed in the other direction.

Then I ran into a tween girl. “Luminary! You’re here alone? Do you want me to ask my parents if you can come for dinner? I’m sure they’ll say yes! And then if you’ll only wait for me, you could take me to the Beauty of Serenica Festival in a few years. It will be most romantic!”

Backing away from her, I turned and bumped right into someone halfway close to my age. “Oh, my. My husband’s going to be jealous that the Luminary himself walked into my arms, but he’ll understand.”

It was more work than I expected to get free of her grasp, but I managed to escape, and I booked it for the first old man I saw at a distance, praying this was really the safer bet I hoped it was.

“Luminary! You’ve returned alone?”

“Huh? Uh, yeah, have you seen the people I came here with?”

“Not since you all went up to the First Forest. Has something gone wrong?”

I gaped. But then I heard footsteps, and I glanced over my shoulder to see all the ladies from before plus a couple more starting to converge on my location. “Uh. So you can tell me which way they went?”

“Of course. The door is right over there. Ah...Do you want me to walk you over there? I can make a rough map for the forest if you need one. Do...you know how to read a map, Honored Luminary?”

“Uh…” I glanced over my shoulder again. The women were getting closer. They reminded me of sharks. “No that’s okay I’m just gonna head on out thanks bye!”

I hurried through the door, and yet another guy I’d never seen before gave me a friendly smile and wave as I passed by.

  


* * *

  


The First Forest was the most terrifying place I’d ever been. Probably because I hadn’t been on the road alone since I set out from home. One of the littler monsters almost ate me, and I didn’t dare try to take on the big ones alone. I spent a lot of time running. I spent a few hours up a tree waiting for some gigantic dragon-lizard thing to give up. I thought about going back to Arboria once or twice, but the old guy had seemed pretty confident that my friends had come this way, and who knew what would happen to me if I spent a night in the same town as those ladies.

By the time I found the gang, I was pretty much on my last legs. Just plain out of magical, physical, emotional and mental energy. The last thought I could manage was how much I was looking forward to seeing everyone. Serena would heal up the bruises and scrapes I couldn’t manage to fix, and Sylv would fuss over me, and Erik would sleep between me and the entrance of the tent, maybe close enough I could smell the deodorant Sylv had started making him wear. I was too tired to think past that. I was gonna have to wait for tomorrow to demand an explanation of why they left Arboria without me. I thought I might fall asleep before I hit the bedroll.

So when I saw the other me across the clearing, sitting next to Erik, smiling over at Serena playing her harp, and wearing a friggin’ huge black sword covered in spikes and eyeballs and screaming pure evil, I decided I was actually already asleep. “Yggdrasil, just let me rest,” I mumbled, and I laid down in the bushes and closed my eyes.

  


* * *

  


I guess they were comfy bushes, because I didn’t wake up until after they’d broken camp and left again. 

It was easy enough to figure out where they’d gone, because there was a gigantic rainbow path leading up to Yggdrasil. I could just spot the gang at the top of it. I thought I spotted my double up there after all, with a little black shape that must have been the terror sword. I panicked a little and almost ran shouting after them.

Only, it turned out there was a line for the rainbow path. I stopped mid-step, teetered on one foot, and ducked back behind a tree, because I spotted Jasper before I actually made any noise.

Well, I knew better than to try to actually fight Jasper all by myself. But he was by himself, too, so I hoped the gang would be able to hold him off until I got there.

Unless Fake El was on Team Jasper. That idea almost had me charging up there after him anyway.

But then I heard voices nearby. “He is almost to the top. Do you not think that he is conspiring somehow with the Darkspawn?”

“Be silent, Hendrik. We would not want to risk giving ourselves away if he is plotting something, would we?”

Hendrik and King Carnelian. I peeked around the tree, and there they were, crouched in the bushes. And then they got up and headed for the rainbow themselves as Jasper disappeared into the roots of the Tree.

I couldn’t figure out anything else to do but hurry up and wait some more. Hendrik was definitely too beefy for me, even if Jade wasn’t likely to kill me if I knocked her dad out of the sky. So I fidgeted and waited for my turn to climb up alone.

It should have been totally awesome, this cool magic bridge and getting to see Yggdrasil up close, but I was freaking out about my friends and the people after them and that horrible fake-me with them. I’m lucky I didn’t slip and fall off, with the way I was hurrying.

I was still late. I caught the sound of voices, and then the weird noise of a teleportation spell, and when I got to the clearing where they must have all met up, no one was left.

Uh, well, not no one. Jasper’s dead body was there. I really, really wanted to know how that had happened. And if Jasper had made the copy of me, where were my friends? Who had teleported them?

I wandered up to the center of the clearing. “Hey, uh, Yggdrasil? I’m here. Do you know what’s going on?”

No response, so I reached out and put my hand against the empty glowing circle of vines. It twitched a little, and then a vine uncurled and reached out to snake under my collar and wiggle a leaf around my ribs.

“Hey! That tickles! Ahaha! Stop it!” I squirmed and giggled and then I felt really awkward about it with Jasper’s dead body right there in the clearing. “Come on, Yggie, read the room,” I said, reminding myself of Sylv.

The vine withdrew and patted me on the head.

“Yeah, okay, uh, nice to meet you too, I guess? But can you just tell me what happened here?” 

The vine stopped patting my head and settled a leaf against it instead. I got a quick vision of myself facing off against Jasper with the devil sword, and of myself taking a new sword from inside the vine orb thing, and my friends and I zooming away with Carnelian and Hendrik along for the ride.

“But that wasn’t me!” I exclaimed.

The vine went back to patting me on the head, then tried to go under my shirt again.

“Sweet Yggdrasil, is this where the Arborians got it from?” I muttered, backing out of reach and only realizing the weirdness of the oath after the fact.

I turned around and stared at Jasper’s body for several minutes while I thought. I wasn’t quite sure if it was Jasper or Hendrik who had been responsible for what happened to Cobblestone, but Jade had insisted that both of them were good men when she’d known them as a child, and that Mordegon might have controlled them both along with her father, and she’d spoken once or twice of her hope that all of them might be redeemable somehow.

Apparently somebody involved had had doubts about that, now.

But maybe that somebody was my mysterious double who’d stolen my friends, and that alone made me want to look into offering second chances. Besides, I was desperately short on information, and Sylv always told me I should talk to everyone I could find in those circumstances.

So I pulled some rope out of my pack, and I bound Jasper’s body hand and foot with the good knots I’d learned from Erik and from Dave. I tied a spare sock into his mouth.

Then I knelt in front of him and started casting Zing.

It worked on the third try. He opened his eyes and stared at my knees. Then he shut his eyes and seemed to slump.

“Um. Hi,” I tried.

He opened his eyes again to glare up at me.

“Hello, mister Jasper,” I said, trying for the good manners my mum always taught me were appropriate when I was preparing to interrogate a prisoner for the first time. “I’ve taken you captive, okay? I wanna talk, so I’m gonna take my sock out of your mouth, but—”

I paused as he made a gagging sound.

“Look, it’s a clean sock. I’m not a monster. Okay, look, I’m going to take it out! Just hold on and stop making that noise! And don’t try to cast any spells at me or I’m gonna have to put it back in, okay?”

I reclaimed my sock. Jasper spat on the ground. Four times. I felt sort of bad the first three times, but I was a tiny bit offended by the end.

“What do you intend, Darkspawn? Was defeating me not enough? Defeating me and then witnessing my master discard me like so much refuse? You have felt the need to bring me back just to humiliate me further?”

“Umm, I actually just wanted to, uh. Hear your version of events?”

More glaring. “My version? Hmph. Well, why not? I gave everything I could to the man, and he saw fit to cut me down with his own hand instead of aiding me in my hour of need.”

“Who? The other me? Was that Mordegon?”

“The other you?”

“My doppelganger. With the gross sword.”

“What?”

“Oh. You don’t know anything about him?”

“What? Tch.” Jasper sneered, and I couldn’t tell whether he was disgusted with himself for asking redundant questions, or disgusted with me for, I don’t know, not being Jasper. “It was not even you who defeated me? Of course. Well, at least I have the consolation that it was not a useless slip of a boy who brought me low.”

“Hey! I’m not useless! And look, I’m getting some good biceps now, Sylv says.” I flexed to demonstrate.

“Agh! Just slay me again now if this is the reason you brought me back.”

“No, sorry. Uh, right, so your master guy? Who were you talking about? Was it Mordegon?”

“Yes, of course it was,” Jasper said in a withering tone. “I dedicated my life to serving my king.”

“Your king? Wait, I thought the king’s name was Carnelian.” Rab would have known, right? Jade would have known.

“Yes, that is how most people know him. But his true name is Mordegon. He belongs to an ancient order of sorcerors. His knowledge and power is greater than any other man.” Jasper frowned. “At least I should have weakened the lot of you to the point where he would easily be able to destroy you. Unless he was responsible for your...doppleganger. But then...For how long has he been planning to sacrifice me?” He thumped his head against the ground, looking miserable.

“Um. Sorry to hear that,” I said. I tried to think of what Sylv would do to console someone about their evil king betraying them. I awkwardly patted him on the arm.

“Do not touch me! I do not wish for your pity!” Jasper hissed at me.

“Okay okay sorry! Sheesh.”

Jasper sighed through his nose, then asked, “Well? It appears I am at your mercy. What are you planning to do with me?”

“Umm…” I sat and thought for a minute. He rolled his eyes at me, which didn’t make it easier to think.

“Did you burn Cobblestone?”

“Yes.” He answered matter-of-factly, like it wasn’t worth lying, and it wasn’t even worth gloating about.

“Did you…” I swallowed and struggled to ask the question, even though I was terrified of the answer. It wouldn’t quite come.

Jasper’s eyes narrowed. “The people are not dead. Hendrik appeared and interfered before I had decided precisely what to do. They are simply imprisoned.”

“Praise the Spirit of the Land,” I whispered, swaying where I knelt. I heard a rustling noise behind me. I wondered if Yggdrasil was offended. I still thought of Her as separate from the Spirit I’d grown up hearing about, and She still wasn’t often the first name I called on. “Thank you, Yggdrasil,” I added politely, just in case. The rustling stopped.

“Thank Hendrik. The fool would defend a mouse, if it begged for his protection.”

I studied Jasper. He stared up at me expectantly. I struggled with the next question: what now?

“Okay. Okay, I don’t really want to kill you or anything, but you’re gonna come after me again if I let you go, aren’t you?”

“Hmph. Why bother?” he said, lip curling again. “I swore my life to the service of my king and master, who has pitted himself as your enemy, but I believe my death by his hand renders my oath null and void.”

“Oh. Really? You won’t try to hurt me or my friends?”

“No.” He scowled. “I did everything for him, and then, this. I shall not serve him again. I believe I should prefer to interfere with his plans if I can.”

“Huh. I guess that means we’re on the same side now, huh?”

Jasper stared at me with a small frown, then said, “I cannot fathom why, but he did fear you, and he is not one for useless superstition. You do oppose him still, correct? You will fight to bring him down?”

“Yep, that’s me.”

“Perhaps I should swear my fealty to you, instead, Darkspawn,” he said, putting on a slow smirk.

“Oh.” I fidgeted with my sleeve. “I guess. Except, you know I’m not really a Darkspawn.”

“Yes, yes, of course. Luminary. Very well. I give you my word as a knight that I shall not raise a hand against you or yours, and I shall offer you my full support in pursuit of defeating Mordegon.”

“Are you really a knight?”

“Of course I am, boy.”

“I’m not a boy. I’m a grown man.”

“Of course you are,” Jasper muttered.

“Okay,” I said, because he hadn’t actually ever murdered everyone I knew and loved after all, and I knew knight’s oaths were serious business, and Sylv was always telling me about the value of making new friends, and I had zero better ideas. “Let’s go see if we can figure out what’s up with my evil twin.”


	2. Chapter 2

I let go of Jasper’s arm and we both took an awkward half step away from each other as the magic from my Zoom spell dissipated. Jasper crossed his arms, tossed his head, and turned in the direction of Heliodor.

“Pity you could not get us a little closer, and still out of sight of the gates, Darkspawn.”

“I’m sorry I can’t pick a teleportation destination nobody’s ever used before,” I said, struggling to deliver my defense in an apologetic tone rather than sarcastic. “Maybe you should teleport us next time?”

“I suppose it cannot be helped,” he said, and I got suspicious that he’d challenged me to cast the spell in the first place because he couldn’t actually do it, instead of as a test of what I could do.

“Anyway, you shouldn’t call me the Darkspawn. I’m actually the Luminary. But that’s weird too, so you should really just call me El.”

“Hm,” Jasper said after a few seconds, right as I started to wonder if he hadn’t heard me and I was taking a breath to ask. “Well, the day marches on. If we pick up the pace, we may find a wagon in which we can smuggle ourselves into the city before the sun sets.”

“Oh. We could sneak in through the sewers, if we’re trying to get into the castle,” I suggested. 

Jasper turned his head to look at me as if I were a three-days-old unwashed soup bowl unexpectedly discovered under the bed. “We will not sneak in through the sewers.”

“You sure?”

“It escapes me why would you even make such a suggestion. The mission must begin with stealth, and it would hardly behoove us to enter the castle clad in stench.”

“It’s mostly just water down there, you know. And we might not even have to swim.”

Jasper shuddered. “Have a care for your equipment, if you have none for your person. Unless you prefer to allow your gear to rust?” He shook his head. “I know other ways into the castle, if we can make it uptown. The trick will be in evading the guards and the citizens along the way.”

“Oh! Getting into town is pretty easy, actually. Last time we just wore hoods to cover our hair and no one recognized us. Erik and me. Even if they thought they did, they didn’t believe we’d actually come back to town.”

“You have already returned to the city in plain sight?” Jasper exclaimed, then threw his head back and slapped a palm over his face. “To what manner of fool have I sworn myself?”

“Well, it worked,” I said, feeling a little defensive.

Jasper glared at the sky, but he said, “I suppose if we cannot think of a better plan on the way, we might as well attempt it. I do not trust that Mordegon will tarry in enacting his plans, and we do not have time to plan something more elegant. You may have to teleport us away if we are seen and cornered. But if we can approach the castle, I have a key to a back way that will most likely be unguarded.”

“Oh. That’s easy, then. All right, let’s go,” I said, dredging up a more enthusiastic smile than I felt like making, after that bit of doom and gloom.

I dug out a couple of hoods from my bag as we set out from the campsite on the road to Heliodor. I decided not to tell Jasper that the second one belonged to Erik. Maybe I wouldn’t tell Erik, either.

“I hope everyone’s okay,” I said. “I don’t like that they’re with that thing that looks like me. What if it decides to attack them when they’re not paying attention?”

“There is nothing you can do about it right now, is there?” Jasper said, sounding more impatient than soothing. “No sense to speak of it. In fact, I believe there is value to silence at this time, to lower the chances of someone overhearing us and recognizing our voices. Let us not speak unless it is to discuss our strategy.”

“Um. Okay.”

I shut up for a little while, and we trudged along, and I worried over my friends, and I had time to start thinking about the fact that my only current ally had a history of trying to kill me, and how he was probably the last person in the world I should trust.

Then I looked at him out of the corner of my eye and saw him running his fingers over the place where he’d taken the wound that took him down, before I fixed him back up. I snuck a glance at his face, and I couldn’t really tell whether he was angry or on the verge of tears. Either way, I guessed this wasn’t a great day for him, either.

I felt a little unexpected sympathy for the guy. I thought maybe it would be better if I ignored his demand for silence and distracted him, like the time Erik kept talking to me after Cobblestone.

So I struggled to think of something to say, but what are you supposed to say at a time like that? Sorry your boss decided to kill you? Better luck next job?

Well, maybe I didn't have to console him. Maybe I could just distract him. “Hey, we can still whistle! Nobody will recognize us from whistling.” I puffed out my chest like Sylv told me to do when I was starting a performance, and I launched into a tune I’d learned from Rab.

Unfortunately, I wasn’t the world’s best whistler, and after I hit three or four off-key notes, Jasper’s incredulous stare turned to a facepalm. “Please, stop.”

“Not a fan of music?”

“I am a fan of quality music,” he said pointedly.

“Like what?” At least he was talking.

Jasper gave me a long look, like Gemma’s granddad anticipating a prank. I tried to look innocent. It should have been easier than it was, because I really was innocent.

“I have a fondness for the sound of harps,” he admitted eventually. “And there is something to be said for the music in Puerto Valor, even though the dancing that often accompanies it is not to my taste.”

I smiled, thinking about Serena’s harp. And Sylv knew songs from all over the place. “I think you’ll like my friends,” I said.

“Will I.” Jasper’s skeptical drawl made me realize I didn’t have a lot of evidence for what kind of people he liked. Or much of anything about him besides his historical appreciation for villainy and monologuing.

But I couldn’t help defending my friends, now that I’d brought it up. “Serena has a harp, and sometimes she and Sylv play songs when we set up camp. Don’t worry, it’s better than my whistling. Although sometimes they let me try to whistle along. Or me and Rab and Jade. It’s usually Rab who starts it.”

“Jade...”

“Oh yeah! You know each other, right?”

“Hmph. Barely. The child I knew would not have dressed like a vagabond.”

“Well, she couldn’t really dress like a princess after her dad said the real princess was dead and he threw her out of the castle.”

He glanced at me out of the corner of his eye. “So she did return, back then? I heard only the court rumors of an impostor trying to pull a cruel trick on the king.”

“What, he really didn’t recognize her?”

“I could not say. Perhaps he felt more grief than he let on, and he dared not to believe it. Or perhaps he never truly felt anything for any of us in the first place, and he was just as glad to be rid of her.” He scowled and crossed his arms. “Why did she use physical force to fight? I did not witness her using magic.”

“Oh, yeah, no, she’s not a mage. Really, she’s the only one who can’t cast any spells at all.”

“Truly? Are you certain?”

“Pretty sure.”

“A peculiar fluke. Perhaps she is keeping something to herself? It seems more likely that a penchant for secrecy should run in the family than that capacity for sorcery does not.”

“Uh, I don’t really think so. She jumped off a cliff with me to try and keep me safe. I feel like if she had any super secret magic, she would have used it before things came to that.”

“Hm. Perhaps that is why he cast her out, then. He wished for an heir who could carry on his full legacy, not only his political power, and she did not suit.” He tossed his head with a sour expression, and added in a lower tone, “But in the end, neither did I, it seems.”

So much for distracting him. I tried, “You know, Jade kept saying she hoped you and Hendrik might join us, if we could get you to listen.”

“Did she?”

I snuck another look at him, and for half a second I thought he was showing some good-guy emotion like nostalgia or remorse. “Yeah. I guess she has good memories from when she was a little kid.”

“Hmph.” He tossed his head and rolled his eyes. But he didn’t say anything else for a moment, and then he said, “Well, magic or no, we should both be glad if we do not have to fight all of your allies along with everything Mordegon can throw at us. Let us hope that we arrive in time to gather information rather than having to barge in and fight every soul in Heliodor.”

  


* * *

  


Nobody tried to fight us. The hoods worked like a charm to get us into the city, to Jasper’s apparent disgust.

I decided to do a little preemptive information gathering, and I asked a random bystander, “Hey. Do you think the king’s at home up there?” 

“Of course. Didn’t you hear about the big party they’re having for some guest of honor?”

“Nope. Who is it?”

“Dunno.”

“We do not have time to chit-chat,” Jasper whispered. I gave a friendly smile to the civilian and obediently followed Jasper away. When we were out of range of my new friend, he scolded, “Are you trying to get us caught?”

“No, I’m trying to gather information.”

“Do not try to improvise any further. You would be wiser to follow my lead.”

The only other person Jasper let me talk to was a merchant. I bought a couple of long cloaks as a quick way to hide our outfits, then followed Jasper uptown.

He took us to what looked like a storage shed but turned out to be the entrance to a secret tunnel into the castle.

“How many secret ways are there to get in and out of the castle?” I asked as he lit a candle.

Jasper shrugged. “At least three that I know of. Three more I have heard rumored.”

“Is that just what you do when you build a castle?”

“It is a fool who does not leave any avenue of retreat.”

“Is this just going to drop us out in the middle of the castle?”

“No. It goes to a passage inside the walls. We will be able to see certain locations such as the entry hall and the throne room without being seen in turn, and if we deem it wise to enter the castle proper tonight, there is a way into my room.”

  


* * *

  


Our first stop gave us a bird’s eye view of the big entry hall of the castle. There was a little narrow slot between the stones of the secret passage wall.

Jasper pulled a spyglass from somewhere and held it up to the spyhole. “Well, it seems the castle is not overrun by monsters or any other visible signs of a new order, and your doppleganger is still running around with the trust of your allies,” he murmured.

“What?” I stopped waffling over whether or not to invade Jasper’s personal space, and I stuck my face up next to his so I could see. Then I gasped and put a hand on the wall for support. “Gemma! That’s Gemma!”

“Who?”

“My best friend from Cobblestone.” Alive and well after all. I suddenly felt a little better about trusting Jasper.

“Out of the dungeons? What manner of game do they play tonight? Perhaps they are testing your double’s impersonation skills.” Jasper frowned. “Perhaps your allies bear important information and Mordegon wishes to garner their trust.”

I squinted and moved my head around to see more of the room through the slot. “There’s Erik. And Fake Me. Ugh, he really looks like me, doesn’t he?”

“He is not, in fact, identical to you,” Jasper said, still looking through the spyglass.

“What? Really?”

“I would have said your twin, or perhaps an older brother, if I did not know you to be the firstborn prince of Dundrasil. Could your father have had a mistress?”

“What? No!” I exclaimed, offended, even though I’d never met the man, and knew nothing about him outside of Rab’s stories. “Anyway, he looks like me to me.”

“Oh? Here, take a look,” he said, handing me the spyglass. “And then look here.” I glanced down from my study of my doppleganger’s face to find Jasper handing over a tiny mirror that fit in the palm of his hand.

“You just carry a mirror around?” I asked him.

“What of it?”

I forgot my question as I studied my own reflection in the candlelight, and then I looked back through the spyglass. “Crap. He’s better looking than me, isn’t he?” I watched Gemma and Erik both standing way too close to the impostor and laughing at something he said. He put a hand on each of their shoulders and smiled. I clenched my hand around the spyglass.

“Be careful! Do not break it,” I distantly heard Jasper say.

“What?”

“Give that back to me,” he said, and he took the spyglass from me. I glared at the mirror instead, until he took that away too. Then I stuck my face back up to the slot and glared through it until Jasper sighed and said, “We are too far away to make out any of their conversation. I suppose we should be glad to see some of your companions alive and at liberty, as it suggests Mordegon’s plan is further from completion than I was led to believe.”

I took a deep breath and calmed down a tiny bit. “Yeah. I guess that’s true. I’m glad they’re okay.”

“Let us move on,” Jasper said, and he picked up the candle to move down the passage.

  


* * *

  


Our second stop was Jasper’s room. “There should be useful tools there, and it did not appear that anything has changed with the guard procedures, so I believe the risk is small.”

As far as I could tell, the secret door was in a patch of the tunnel that was the same as every other part of the tunnel, but Jasper pressed his fingers on an unassuming stone, and a big chunk of wall turned into a doorway that swung open.

“Woah,” I breathed. Jasper stuck his head into the opening, then strode through. I followed, pressing my fingers against the wall where I’d seen him touch it, just to see if I could figure out the trick of it.

The rock moved under my fingers with a click, and the door started to swing closed again. I ducked through on reflex just before it closed.

Jasper spun around. “Did you trigger it again?” he hissed.

I shifted my eyes away, raised my eyebrows, and tried a little optimistic shrug and smile.

“Tch. It is a nuisance to open from this side. The trigger is on the ceiling. Move a chair over by the fireplace while I fetch my...What is this?”

I looked around for threats, or surprises, and couldn’t really see anything. In fact, Jasper kept a pretty boring room, from the looks of it. In fact...

“They have taken my things! Already? Pah! He thinks to erase me so quickly from the castle?” For an instant, Jasper looked as stricken as Sandy if you picked up a piece of food you’d dropped in front of her, and I felt a tiny bit bad for him. Then he sneered and rolled his eyes. “Perhaps he imagined I was the kind of idiot who would leave incriminating evidence laying around for anyone to find. Or perhaps I was to have kept his dark secrets embroidered into my kerchiefs.”

I fidgeted with my sleeve. Jasper ignored me and went to the far side of the room to poke at the wall over there.

I watched for a minute while he opened up some other little secret panel, until I suddenly remembered I had a job to do myself. I looked around for a chair.

There wasn’t a chair.

“Jasper, there’s no chair,” I whispered. He didn’t hear me. I sighed and looked around for an alternative. The bed was still there, though the mattress was stripped of the sheets. I tried to pull the bedframe toward the fireplace. It wouldn’t budge.

“Jasper, I can’t move the furniture,” I tried whispering again. He didn’t respond.

I heard voices outside the room.

“—don’t think you’ll want to go in there. We’ve just about cleaned it out.”

I let go of the bedframe and scurried over to Jasper. “Jasper! Someone’s coming!” I hissed.

Jasper jumped and clutched a stack of papers to his chest. One drifted to the floor, apparently without him noticing. A flash of purple caught my eye, but I couldn’t make out the image before it fluttered away to land face-down on the floor.

Then we heard another voice, deep and booming and unfortunately familiar. Hendrik.

“But there must be something. His Majesty has acted with haste, and I understand the emotion behind it, but if there is any chance of a clue, something we overlooked…”

“Where is the chair?” Jasper hissed, rushing past me and then staggering to a halt halfway back to the fireplace.

“There’s no chair!” I hissed back.

“We must not let him find us now!”

I panicked, and as the door clicked and began to open, I grabbed Jasper’s arm and teleported us out.

  


* * *

  


It was dark at the campsite. We stood around in silence for a minute.

“What have you done?” Jasper finally said.

“I got us out of there. Before they found us.”

“We should have gone back into the passage! Why did you not open the door?”

“You didn’t tell me how!”

“I told you to move a chair! The simplest of tasks!”

“There wasn’t a chair!”

“Of course there was a chair! By the desk!”

“There wasn’t a desk! There was just the bed, and I couldn’t move that!”

“Then why did you not tell me so?”

“I tried! You weren’t listening!”

“You cannot have tried very hard.”

“There were people outside! I didn’t want them to overhear!”

“Tch. Idiot,” Jasper muttered. I decided to pretend he was talking to himself, because otherwise I wasn’t going to have an easy time staying friendly with him.

“What should we do now?” I said.

Jasper took a long moment to answer. “Do you have any fire magic?” he finally asked.

“Yes?”

“Start a small fire.”

“What?”

“Shall you question every instruction I give you?”

I used all my diplomacy and said, “Maybe?” At the moment, I wasn’t feeling very cheery about the idea of doing anything Jasper told me to do.

“We are at a campsite, are we not? Create a campfire.”

“Oh. Um. Shouldn’t we…” I turned in the direction I thought the road would be, but my night vision was no good yet.

“Regroup and consider our next steps? Yes.”

“Oh.” I stared at the part of the darkness that was probably the ground, as it sank in that we were way out of position and Mordegon was going to have all night to plot or monologue or anything else he wanted to do. Then, for lack of a better idea, I began to shuffle around until I found the unlit campfire with my toes.

I touched the pile of wood to make sure it really was the right thing to set on fire before I cast the spell. I was no Veronica, but I could do this much without a problem.

Jasper waited until I stepped away from the flame, and then he stepped forward with his stack of papers, crouched down, and started feeding them to the flame.

“Wait! What are you doing? Isn’t that important?” I reached out a hand like the first sheet wasn’t already on fire.

“These...documents are of no use to us.”

“Really? The one thing you grabbed in your room? What is all that, anyway?”

“Nothing!” Jasper turned the stack away from me as I craned my neck, and he sped up his work. “Material that ought not to fall into the hands of the enemy. That is all.”

“Oh, like evil research or something?”

Jasper snorted, and drawled, “Yes. Vile secrets that must never be turned against us.”

He overdid it a little bit with the sarcasm, and I decided it must only be something embarrassing, like the time Dunstan downed a few too many mugs one evening and thought it was funny to write bad love poems for a horse. Only it was mostly Gemma that was embarrassed and decided to burn them when we found them the next day. I thought they were kinda funny, but we were thirteen, and that was the year she didn’t even like his puns.

I was still grumpy enough at Jasper that I decided not to tell him about the page he’d dropped.

Jasper finished with the papers, then stood up, crossed his arms, and turned away from the fire to stare in the direction of the city.

I did the same, and after a minute of the dramatic posturing, I asked, “What are we going to do now?”

“Little has changed. We know there have been no dramatic changes visible across the world as of a few minutes ago. We know he had not crushed your companions under his heel. And that is all we know, except that we are useless at this range.”

“I could try and teleport us to the city.”

“Still too dangerous. Even with only the usual heightened security that accompanies an event at the castle, they will be watching closely for anyone who arrives in that way. Never mind what manner of trap might await if he is prepared for you in particular.”

“So we’re gonna have to walk. Again.”

Jasper sighed. “So it does appear. Perhaps if we set out now, we will arrive early in the morning. If we are very fortunate, perhaps Mordegon will pursue a good night’s rest before he enacts the end of the world as we know it.”

So we put out the fire, and we set out on the most ominous, high-stakes, redundant, and boring stretch of adventure I’d gone through yet.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Minor content advisory for canon-typical violence: I'm steering away from anything remotely gory, but there are man-eating monsters in the world and also a robot is harmed.

The second walk from the campsite back up to the city was even quieter and more awkward than the first.

It was also slow going, trying to avoid the nighttime monsters in the name of speed, and wasting more time anyway trying to detour around them. Not to mention the exhaustion of a long day and a longer night, and the gloom of being so far away from our goal. Erdwin’s Lantern was strangely bright behind us, and the dark shapes around us seemed to have a faintly reddish tint.

“Do you think we’re still in time?” I finally asked, as the pre-dawn light finally let us see the city walls in the distance.

Jasper shrugged a shoulder. “He said that the world would know when his plans reached their fruition. Perhaps we still have time.”

We walked closer. The sun came up. I rubbed my hands over my face and tried to pretend I’d gotten any sleep.

Then the light changed, and I turned to check behind me, and I wondered if I was dreaming, but I knew better than to just fall for that two days in a row. “Jasper? Jasper!”

“What?”

“Something’s happening in the sky.” My mouth fell open as I watched a huge black stain unfurl just above the horizon.

“No,” I heard Jasper sigh. “We are too late.”

I took a couple steps toward it, pointing the mark on the back of my hand at the sky, as if I might fight whatever was happening. It was almost as effective as a bumblebee shaking his fist at the sun.

“What do we do?” I asked.

“Wait,” Jasper said.

“For what?”

“Whatever comes under Mordegon’s reign,” Jasper said, sounding weary.

We waited.

The splotch stopped spreading.

The sun still shone.

“The world didn’t end,” I said, eventually.

“I will admit, I expected something more immediate than an omen in the distant sky.”

Then a bunicorn leapt out of the bushes with a loud hiss and landed on Jasper’s face. He gave a muffled shout and staggered, flailing at it with his hands.

I stared in astonishment, then drew my sword to try to help. Only Jasper was moving like a goat that had gotten into Dunstan’s ale mug, and I didn’t dare try to hit the monster with my sword. I inched forward and tried to grab the thing with my free hand.

I heard another hiss and ducked reflexively. A second bunicorn flew over my head. “There’s more of them! Don’t worry, I’ve got it!” I shouted.

“Mmph!”

A normal bunicorn fought like my neighbor’s old plowhorse protesting a harness: you got the feeling it didn’t want to be there and would be just as glad if you’d go away, but really, it hadn’t expected anything better out of life. This bunicorn fought like four-year-old Cole the time I pretended I was about to eat his whole birthday cake.

I focused and threw my best effort into the fight. The thing hopped around and made itself hard to hit, but I managed to swat it away with my sword every time it leapt for me, and then I got a lucky hit and took it out.

I turned back just in time to see Jasper fling his tiny opponent into the air and launch a blast of dark magic after it with a snarl. There was nothing left of it when the magic cleared away.

“Are you all right?” I asked.

“Fine!” Jasper snapped.

I spotted scratches all over his face, so I cast a little healing spell anyway. It didn’t do anything for the bunicorn slobber in his hair. I decided not to comment about that.

Those bunicorns weren’t the only monsters on the road that got really cranky all of a sudden. I didn’t have time to worry about anything beyond the moment as we suddenly had to fight everything that caught sight of us.

We’d cleared everything around us and we were taking a little breather when we heard the sound of horses thundering down the road.

I looked up and immediately recognized Hendrik, grim-faced as he led the way. Then I suffered an uneasy jolt at the sight of my double on the next horse behind him, like unexpectedly seeing my face on a wanted poster.

I just barely had time to register the presence of the rest of my friends following behind them, and then Jasper was yanking me out of the road and hissing, “Look down, fool!” I remembered the whole stealth business and ducked my head to let the hood better cover my face before anyone looked right at us.

“Thank you, darlings! Don’t worry about the sky! We’re on it!” I heard Sylv call as they rode past, and the spike of relief I felt at one of my friends being present and speaking to me was so intense that I looked up after all. But they were already past, and nobody looked back at me as the group rode away from us.

  


* * *

  


“Why are they going by horse? Where are they going?” Jasper said once they were well out of earshot.

“Cobblestone!” I exclaimed.

“Why? There’s nothing…” Jasper cut himself off and looked away.

I hugged my arms over my chest. “Right. Yeah. Nothing much there now. No way the villagers would be back yet, if they’re even going back, with the town...” I stopped talking, too. I was way too tired to talk about that with Jasper of all people.

Jasper cleared his throat. “They must be going somewhere else.”

“I guess...the Emerald Coast? Maybe it’s close to the thing?” I waved at the sky blob.

“Why would they not simply teleport?”

“I dunno. Maybe they can’t?”

“You said they teleported away from Yggdrasil, did you not?”

“Oh, yeah. That’s what She showed me. Unless it wasn’t my dopplegoober teleporting them? Maybe Mordegon did it?”

“Your dopple—” Jasper cut himself off with a sigh. “The term is doppleganger.”

“Whatever. Let’s just call him Dopple.”

Jasper gave me a look, and he ignored my suggestion to say, “If they are heading to the Emerald Coast, perhaps we can arrive there ahead of them and secure an appropriate surveillance position before their arrival.”

“Right. Right, we can do that.” I tried to shake off the weariness from the long day and longer night, put a hand on Jasper’s shoulder, and Zoomed us to the Emerald Coast campsite.

  


* * *

  


I was really tired.

We fought the monsters in the foliage to make a little safe zone for us to hide ourselves, but that sapped the last of my energy. Then Jasper piled leaves on me like a blanket and told me to be still and silent.

I instantly dozed off.

  


* * *

  


I woke up to the sound of a mind-numbingly loud wailing sound, followed immediately by a sensation of wind blowing all the leaves off of me.

“Hwuh?” I said, and I scrambled to my hands and knees, swatting at the leaves, as though they were the threat, rather than the massive shape moving overhead.

“Angh,” Jasper said next to me, noticeably flinching. Then he grabbed a fistful of my shirt and hissed, “Get down!”

I obeyed on autopilot, too distracted by what I was seeing to actually think for myself. My sleep-fuzzed brain was having trouble understanding the vision of the horrifying flying monster swooping above us. White as a ghost, with traces of gold that put me in mind of the highlights on Hendrik’s sinister black armor, and a mouth big enough to swallow Jasper and me both without even noticing.

“What is it what is it?” I asked Jasper urgently.

“I have no idea! Hush!”

It swung into a turn, some distance away from us, and I glanced down to check for defensible terrain or enemy minions. I gasped as I spotted my friends standing down on the beach, and of course Hendrik and— “There’s Dopple! Jasper, he’s here!”

“I see him,” Jasper said grimly.

“Are they going to fight?”

“I think not. They have drawn no weapons,” he said.

In fact, the whole team looked more surprised than worried. I bit my lip and wondered if I ought to try to cast a spell in their defense, though I had the feeling it might be like throwing a cup of water to scold a waterfall. But as the monster circled around for a second pass and headed back in the direction of the group, it didn’t come so low to the ground. I unclenched my hands from the grass.

As it passed over them, all of them were enveloped in a white light, and then they vanished.

“Jasper! What did it do to them!”

“I—”

Whatever answer he might have given was drowned out by another of those terrible wails. I covered my ears in protest.

I watched the monstrosity, shocked and helpless and feeling numb, until it banked into a sharp enough turn to show its back to the two of us left down below, and I spotted the tiny, colorful figures of my friends on its back. I went weak with relief. “They’re up there,” I managed.

“Ah. So they are. So they came here to find a flying steed, hm?”

“Oh, no. They’re going to use it to go to the sky blob?”

“Mayhaps, but look. They are flying in the other direction at present.”

“Oh.” I flopped onto my back and watched the thing fly out of sight behind the northern cliffs. “Why? Don’t tell me they’re going to make more sky blobs or something?”

“I could not say.”

“What were they doing before that thing showed up?”

“I do not know.” Jasper scowled at the sky.

“Well, what happened when they rode into the area? I was asleep until the, the screamy thing got here. The...wailing whale?” The pun barely cheered me up at all.

“I do not know. I had thought that you were on watch.”

“Huh? No, I crashed as soon as...Wait a minute. Did you fall asleep too?”

Jasper gave a long, audible sigh through his nose, then said, “We might as well find a proper place to rest.”

“You fell asleep!”

“Perhaps somewhere far from whatever that is,” he said, waving at the splotch in the sky, “And also not in the direction they have taken. Sniflheim? No, of course not Sniflheim, all things considered. Lonalulu?”

“I can’t believe you fell asleep too,” I said, starting to feel amused, or maybe hysterical, but Jasper refused to respond, so I magicked us away.

  


* * *

  


Lonalulu was relatively peaceful, all things considered. We slept late, and we took a few hours to resupply and plan.

And then we went straight from tropical paradise to frozen wasteland.

“Are you sure this is a good idea?” I asked, healing Jasper after yet another swarm of frenzied northern monsters. Whatever else you could say for the guy, he was fighting to protect me like a proper knight from one of Sylv’s stories, whether that was because he was deeply committed to his goal of ironic vengeance by Luminary, or just because he was enough of a strategist to put himself and his armor between the monsters and the only healer in sight. Not that anyone could see the armor under his oversized coat. Jasper had opinions about proper gear for cold-weather traveling, which honestly made the trip significantly better in spite of the horrible monsters.

“Do you require me to review the matter for you?” Jasper said, then began a summary of the morning’s discussion with a mockery of exaggerated patience, dragging out his words. “If we are to pursue a flying steed, we must have a flying steed of our own. The only creature either of us has seen that might suit to match its altitude and speed is a frozen dragon. Ergo, we are going to attempt to rescue a frozen dragon.”

I sighed and refocused my efforts on trudging through the snow. I’d already made my protest about the legends of the thing being evil, but hey, here I was, fighting side-by-side with Jasper, so who knew?

And the journey itself might have been a little too dangerous. The local monsters had been too strong for me to be able to fight on my own a few days before, and now they were even stronger, so I was seriously dependent on Jasper’s protection.

But as he said, we had no better plan than this, so I kept my mouth shut and plowed ahead.

  


* * *

  


“I don’t know if I’m going to make it through the ice in one day. There’s an awful lot of it, and I’m no Veronica.”

“Do not quit, child. I believe I have seen its eye twitch under the lid.”

“I’m—Really?”

I forgot the “child” comment in my nervous excitement, and I craned my neck to try to get a better view through the warped surface of the ice I’d been trying to melt. I didn’t spot any movement from the scary black dragon down below, but I didn’t really think Jasper was prone to exaggeration in the name of encouragement.

I rolled my shoulders and cast another bit of fire magic toward the ice. “Man, fire is so not my specialty. Do you think lightning would do any good?”

“Against ice? I am uncertain whether…”

I tuned out Jasper as I started summoning the spell. Lightning always came easier than fire for me, especially if I could manage to link it to my weird Luminary powers. I felt a sudden burst of hope over the idea of the different magic working much better. Of finally being done with this long afternoon of focused casting. Of being able to make some clear, significant progress toward our mission at last. Of having a cool pet dragon to fly around on.

With that hope, I felt the mark on my hand tingle underneath my mitten, and I summoned a supercharged bolt of lightning from the empty sky.

It was a little more impressive than I was expecting, and I wasn’t really thinking about how close I was aiming. The thunder of the spell made me slip on the ice and knocked me on my butt, and even Jasper staggered. I blinked at the bright spots in my vision. “Did that do anything?”

“Have a care!” Jasper snapped. Then his tone changed to the closest thing I’d ever heard to enthusiasm from him: “But yes, it looks like it did.”

I felt a little tremor pass through the ice, accompanied by a low creaking sound, and I blinked furiously to try to un-dazzle myself. Then I heard Jasper make a small grunt of concern, and he stepped and slid towards me. He lifted me up by the hood of my heavy coat and pulled me backwards. I staggered to try to stand upright and move where he led.

As I turned a little and stopped trying to look directly at the dragon and its prison, I caught a better glimpse of what had happened. A respectable little hole, about the width of my hand, bore through the ice toward the creature, with little cracks running in all directions out from it.

And the dragon’s eye was open. And tracking us as we moved.

“Hello, dragon, sir! Or ma’am! Uh, hello, big impressive dragon! Do you understand us? We’re trying to get you out of there!”

I heard Jasper sigh behind me. I saw the dragon roll its eye in front of me.

There was another creaking sound. The cracks in the ice spread a little further. And then there was a loud crashing sound as the ice burst open and the dragon shot up and out of its prison.

“At lasssst!” It coiled through the air in a spiral pattern. “Free! Free at lassst! Ahh, the air! The ssspace!” It tilted its head downward. Started to fly towards us. And it added, “Food.”

I held out my hands and called, “Wait! Don’t eat us! We just rescued you!”

It slowed down, then pulled up just in front of me and turned to regard me out of one eye, from a distance that felt way too close. “Ressscued?”

“Right! We broke through the ice for you. We could use your help!”

“You asssk me for a favor? Me? Do you know who I am, little moussse?”

“I’m not a mouse, I’m the—” I stopped talking as Jasper’s hand clenched painfully on my shoulder, and I belatedly realized it might not be a great idea to introduce myself as a Luminary, if the legends were true and the dragon had history with Erdwin.

“Surely your release from your prison is worth a favor, if not an alliance,” Jasper said.

“I feel the ssstrength of my dark massster already. I would have broken free sssooner or later. But let it not be sssaid that I am not generousss. I will offer you thisss one favor: if you leave immediately, I will not eat you.”

It flew in a low circle around us, then shot off to the edge of the lake toward a killing machine that I hadn’t noticed approaching. The dragon hurled itself against the smaller opponent, apparently only for the pleasure of flinging it into a cliff and watching it break into pieces.

I bit my lip and thought about how awesome it would be to have a flying mount that could do moves like that. And then I took a deep breath and opened my mouth again.

“Are you sure? It was a lot of ice. And you weren’t really moving around. I think you would have had a hard time without our help.”

The dragon turned around and spun lazily back toward me. I got a little nervous, but if it liked to talk at close range, I guessed it was a good sign that it wanted to come back towards us, so I held my ground.

It drew near, lifted its head upwards, then opened its mouth as it arched back downwards toward me.

It ate me in one bite.

I reflexively brought up my hands to protect my face at the last possible instant as its teeth snapped shut under my feet, and I found myself in a space that was tighter than the time I stole one of Gemma’s old dresses and tried to put it on to tease her and somehow ended up stuck with only my arms sticking up out of the neckhole.

My stomach dropped as we moved in some unexpected direction. I made some kind of muffled squeak into the fur of my sleeves, before some survival instinct told me to try and conserve air.

I tried to squirm around a little, but I couldn’t move much, and I didn’t have a weapon anywhere I could get at it. And then my new prison started to squeeze around my head and shoulders, and it mashed my wrists into my face. I squeaked again, starting to panic as I struggled to come up with some kind of escape.

I might not have thought of it if I hadn’t used it the day before in an emergency situation, but today it popped back into my mind: I wanted out and away, so I tried to cast Zoom.

Well, I wasn’t thinking about the constraints of Zoom just then. I forgot that I needed a little room overhead to actually pick up enough speed to enter the teleportation network. So all it did was launch me upward at a high velocity without taking me outside of the dragon. I felt my head and fists squish painfully downwards as I suddenly collided with unseen resistance.

But I guess it’s also not too comfortable to have a tiny creature hurl itself into the back of your throat at the speed of magic, because suddenly the squeezing stopped, and I felt myself lurching in the other direction as the monster swung itself in a different way. I half-heard, half-felt a squelching pop, felt an instant of free-fall, and I saw blessed daylight as I flung my arms out in a useless search for balance. Then I crash-landed on Jasper.

He grunted as we fell, and then he pushed me off of him. I neither resisted nor helped, feeling pretty well stunned.

“Are you well? Can you stand?”

“Nhh,” I said. Then I caught a glimpse of the dragon circling overhead, and a self-preservation instinct kicked in. I struggled upright with Jasper’s help.

“I believe it is time for us to retreat,” Jasper said as the creature roared and sprayed some dark smoke out of its nostrils.

“Gnh,” I agreed. I couldn’t get my legs to move, but Jasper was still holding onto my arm, and as I sucked in a deep breath of painfully cold, wonderfully accessible air, I realized that Zoom probably ought to work now. So I cast the spell, and it launched us up and properly into the grasp of the magic, and we left the dragon behind.

  


* * *

  


Back on the Lonalulu beach, I sat down hard in the sand.

“Fool boy,” Jasper said. “Here, let us remove your outerwear.”

He reached down and fumbled with the buttons on my coat, clumsy through his own mittens, and for an instant, the “fool boy” comment started to seem more like the way Mum used to say, “Oh, child,” when I came home covered in mud.

After a couple seconds, I recovered enough wits to be embarrassed. “I can take off my own coat,” I said reproachfully, and I fumbled my hands together to take off my mittens.

“Wait,” Jasper said, shoving my hands apart. “You are covered in...something, and it would be better not to expose your skin. I believe it is eating through your coat.”

“Huh? Ack!” I said, spotting the greenish-tinged dragon drool coating my coat. I couldn’t quite decide if it was making a hissing noise or if I was only hearing the roar of the ocean, but I was suddenly certain the fur of the coat was shorter than it used to be.

“Hold still,” Jasper said, and he drew his sword.

I was still jumpy enough that I flinched, as if he was going to stab me in the middle of helping me. He just paused and gave me an irritable look.

“Uh,” I said, and I tried to cover by turning my motion into gripping the front of my coat and lifting it away from me, holding the material taut. “Here.”

Jasper gave a brief nod and shifted his grip on his sword to what looked like an awfully good two-handed stabbing position. But he only yanked the tip of the blade through the garment and neatly sliced it open.

I let the coat sleeves push the slimy mittens off my hands as I removed it. Then I got Jasper to cut the laces on my boots as well so I could kick them off while I removed the extra-heavy trousers, and I stepped onto a clean patch of sand, wearing only a light shirt and boxer shorts. I glanced over to see Jasper removing his own outer layers, which were partially slime-covered too, I guessed from when I crashed into him.

I suddenly thought of my knapsack. I found it half covered by the remnants of the coat. “My things,” I said, plaintively protesting reality.

“Hm. Perhaps metal and glass may have survived. But I believe your other clothes may not have fared well,” Jasper said. He prodded the mess with his sword, peeling the coat away to reveal the bag, badly the worse for wear.

I saw a flash of my comfortable old purple outfit, which I’d thought would be safe stashed in my bag. But a hole the size of my head was showing in it where a large glob of acid had eaten through my knapsack and more than one folded layer of the tunic, and there were spots and streaks working their way through the rest.

I stared at it, and I thought about how many decades Grandpa Chalky had kept it safe in Cobblestone. How mum had taken it to Gemma to adjust the fit in secret, to surprise me with it when I was tall enough to fit it. How I’d seen Dopple wearing a close imitation of it.

Dopple had already taken my friends. With the loss of the tunic, I felt like I’d conceded another big part of my identity over to him.

I felt like crying.

“The pocket,” I said, suddenly anxious. “Can you get to the pocket? There’s something important in there.” I gestured to Jasper’s sword.

Jasper obligingly cut away the pockmarked leather of the knapsack and the lightly damaged bit of cloth of the outer pocket, and I saw the charm Gemma had made me, intact. I snatched it up and held it in my hands.

“A magic talisman?” Jasper asked.

“Just...just something a friend made me.”

“A sentimental trinket? Your most treasured possession is something with no practical use?” Jasper said, voice dripping with scorn.

I’d been getting used to his attitude over the past two days, and I thought I was getting used to ignoring it, since he was helping me all the same. But just now, while I was already feeling low, it hit me somewhere that hurt.

“Jasper, I know you don’t like me, but can you just...not be mean to me right now? Please?” I tried to be calm and polite about it, but my voice quavered a little on the last word.

He fell silent, and I wondered if he was working out some new insult about how childish I was being. I stared out at the sea and tried not to care.

“You should heal yourself, if you can,” he said at last. “I doubt you took a fall like that with no injury whatsoever.”

“Oh,” I said, suddenly registering an awful lot of aches and pains, and I followed the suggestion with a spell. My spirits lifted the tiniest bit as the pain faded.

“You should wash your hands and face, to be sure no trace of the contaminant remains.”

“Yeah, okay.” I hung the charm around my neck, took a few steps, and knelt in the surf, and I washed up without thinking about it, as if I was six and Mum had told me to do it in that same brisk tone.

“We will purchase some new clothing. It is just as well, in one sense: better we should not be seen in our familiar garments.”

“Huh?”

“We did not succeed at the mission, but the world still has yet to end. Perhaps we may still gather information on the ground, even if we cannot fly, and if we wish to keep our presence a secret from the enemy, we should not make it easy for them to realize our presence.”

“Oh.”

“I will just dispose of these things, and we shall take a well-earned rest, and we will not worry about anything until tomorrow.”

I watched Jasper use his swords like salad tongs to pick up all the ruined items and fling them into the ocean, and it didn’t occur to me until we turned and headed into town to wonder if this was what it looked like when Jasper wanted to comfort someone.


	4. Chapter 4

Jasper’s suggestion for what to do after the dragon fiasco was practically boring by comparison: just Zoom from town to town and ask if anyone had seen a giant whale monster flying through the sky. “If we can figure out where they’re going, perhaps we can inquire about local mythology to give us a hint of what they mean to accomplish. We do know that Mordegon is fond of recovering ancient sources of power.”

And we did get a couple leads. Northish, past the Warrior’s Rest Inn. But also westward, from just outside Octagonia, and then south from Sniflheim, where Jasper pulled his new hood low and let me do the talking. I kept my hood on, too, especially when I told a guard I’d heard a rumor about a dragon maybe kind of being free from the lake prison. He ran off in a panic, and I hurried out of town before he could come back and ask me for more details.

“This is not quite as fruitful as one might hope,” Jasper said when we paused our little journey for dinner in Puerto Valor. “They do not appear to have a single destination at the moment. At least we have not found any new anomalies in the sky.”

“Maybe we should go south, after all,” I said reluctantly. We’d popped into Gondolia and gotten a pretty good idea that the blob was near Gallopolis or Hotto, but we’d been avoiding getting too close to it.

Jasper looked to the south with a grim expression. “I suppose you are correct. If we cannot identify their goal by chasing them, we may as well come at the problem from the other end.”

So we braced ourselves and hopped over to the desert city.

  


* * *

  


“It’s huge,” I said, for the third time during our visit.

We had avoided the palace, fearing that being recognized there could blow our cover, but we talked to everyone on the streets of Gallopolis, looking for stories about what had happened, what was happening, and who might know anything. We found a lot of chaos, fear, people leaving town, and one lady selling hastily-slapped-together doomsday merchandise, but not a lot of useful answers. For all the solid information we found, we might as well have just stopped and stared at the thing for a few hours. The only useful information we’d collected was a common name for it: the Dark Star.

Of course, we did keep stopping to stare at the thing. It was hard not to. It was hideous, and spooky, and it loomed like a horrible giant bug that refused to leave your bedroom ceiling when you just wanted to go to bed.

This time, as we stood staring up at it, Jasper raised his hands and chanted some words I couldn’t understand, and some kind of translucent disc surrounded by runes appeared in front of his face. Then he flinched, said, “Ah!” and moved a hand in front of his face. The disc disappeared.

“What?”

“I used a spell to inspect the magical aura of it, but it was so strong that it was painful to look at it. I have never heard of this happening.”

“Are you okay?”

“Fine,” he said. But he rubbed at his eyes, and then said irritably, “I am having some difficulty in seeing clearly at the moment. Perhaps it is time for us to find our rest.”

“What, here?” I exclaimed.

“The Star has not changed since our arrival. There is no reason to assume it will do so during the night. And if it does, I am certain that there will be a commotion in the streets loud enough to wake us.”

I thought about it, made an effort to work up my courage, and said, “Right. Okay. Can you see where you’re going?”

“I believe you are going to have to guide me,” he said, and I thought the admission pained him more than the magic.

“Okay, no problem,” I said, trying to be as casual about it as possible. I hesitated, then reached for his elbow.

“Do not touch me!” he snapped. “Just tell me which direction to turn.”

I did my best to direct him down the street and into the inn, and I was grateful that he couldn’t see the sympathetic look the innkeeper gave us as I told him where to stop so I could pay for a room. He made it into the room without crashing into the wall more than once, and he climbed into one of the beds without even taking off his boots, and he rolled to face away from me.

I guessed that was goodnight, and I guessed I’d better try to get some sleep, too.

  


* * *

  


I was drained, and I thought I might be able to sleep. But every time I started to drift off, I woke back up in a desperate panic, imagining the Dark Star reaching a tendril down to grab me like an octopus.

After the third time I woke back up that way, I got up and put my cloak back on. I crept out of the room without waking Jasper, and I stepped outside.

I couldn’t decide if it was more ominous or less when the rest of the sky was dim, as opposed to seeing the Dark Star squatting in the middle of a blue sky. For a minute I felt better about being right there to keep an eye on the thing, instead of letting it out of my sight.

Then I just felt overwhelmed by everything, and I looked away.

My eyes landed on the circus tent. It made me miss Sylv, badly, but my feet started drifting towards it.

They were running a show. That thing in the sky, and they were running a show. I smiled, just for an instant. Maybe Sylv had left something of themself behind, on purpose or not.

I tugged my cloak tighter around myself and went inside. There were only a handful of patrons. For a second, I worried about drawing attention to myself, alone in the city without telling Jasper where I was, but then I saw somebody else wearing a hood in the back of the seating area, and I decided I’d blend right in. I drifted up to take the next table over from them.

“Hello, friend. It’s nice to get away from the pressures of life and blend in with the crowd sometimes, isn’t it?”

The familiar voice shocked me into looking up, right into Faris’s face.

“Ha ha!” he said, though he blessedly did so relatively quietly. “El, my friend! It is you! I thought as much!”

“Faris? What are you doing here?” I said stupidly.

“I am taking a breather after a long day of being a beloved public figure,” he said, pressing a hand to his chest. Then he pulled up a chair right next to me and slumped down into it. “But just between us, I am coming up on my wits’ end. Are you here to fix the Thing?”

“The Thing?”

He waved a hand upwards. “The Dark Star. You must know something. Please, tell me you know something.”

“Oh. Not really.”

“Ah, well.” For a second, Faris looked more worn-down than I’d ever thought to see him. Then he shook himself, put on a bright smile, and put a friendly hand on my shoulder. “Fake it till we make it, eh? We’ll figure it out. I know we will, with you here.”

I suddenly felt a lot more kindly toward Faris than I ever had. It was all well and good to have had one ally left in the world, but finally having someone say something really positive to me after several of the worst days of my life, well, it meant a lot.

“Maybe I know something,” I said on impulse. “Not enough. But maybe it’s a clue.”

“Tell me, friend.”

“Some of this is going to sound pretty out there, but, trust me, okay?”

“I am all ears.”

“Okay. Have you heard of Mordegon? Or the Dark One?”

Faris gave every appearance of being an earnest listener, and I ended up spilling everything. Evil king. Evil me. Nefarious plans. Jasper—

“ _The_ Sir Jasper is in Gallopolis at this very moment?” Faris exclaimed.

“Uh, yeah, but he’s sleeping.” I bit my lip, suddenly thinking about what Jasper would say about taking Faris into our confidence. Friendly or not, I couldn’t honestly advocate for Faris’s reliability. “Hey, Faris, listen. You aren’t going to tell anyone about this, right?”

“Well...Shouldn’t I speak to my father about the matter? We could put out the word, have your false self arrested, and prevent his schemes.”

“The thing is, we don’t know what his schemes are. And he was strong enough to beat Jasper when Jasper thought he had the upper hand. I’m afraid if he knows he’s been found out, he’ll do something dangerous. I don’t want my friends to get hurt. Or your family or your people, either.”

“I see, I see. So it must stay a secret. Well, fear not! I am no stranger to secrets,” he said with a wink.

“Yeah, I guess that’s true,” I said, smiling a little at that.

“So, we must gather information without tipping our hand, eh?”

“We?”

“You did not think I would leave you in the lurch, did you? I have not forgotten our friendship. And you have given me more information than I have had all day. You have given me hope! Perhaps if we can resolve the mystery of your villain, we will also solve the problem in the sky.”

“Oh. Thanks, Faris,” I said, meaning it. I was feeling a little better, and kind of surprised about it.

We fell silent and watched the circus performers wrap up their show, and then Faris turned another friendly smile on me.

“Well, nothing has changed with the Dark Star all day and all evening. I do not think anything is going to happen tonight, and surely there is nothing we can do to prepare by staying up all night. Meet me here at noon tomorrow, and we will reconsider our options.” He stood up and clapped a hand on my shoulder again. “Rest easy, my friend. Gallopolis stands beside you. Even if most of the citizens do not know it yet, ha ha!”

  


* * *

  


Strange as it was to say, Faris had actually made me feel better to the point where I managed to sleep through the night and well into the morning.

“Wake up!” Jasper commanded.

“I’m awake,” I lied.

“Your erstwhile companions are in town, with your doppleganger. They have gone to the palace.”

“What?” I sat up, a shot of alarm blasting the sleep right out of me. “Oh, no. Faris!”

“The prince? You are on a first name basis?”

“Yeah?” I rubbed my eyes and tried to figure out if I wasn’t supposed to be.

“That is ill news. He is likely to be duped along with the rest of your friends. The last thing we need is for him to gather another kingdom to Mordegon’s cause.”

“Oh, it’s okay. I saw Faris last night.”

“You what?”

There was an edge to Jasper’s voice, and suddenly I felt awfully self-conscious. “Um. I couldn’t sleep, so I went out to the circus. In disguise! But Faris was there in disguise too. Anyway, he recognized me and we talked?” I got quieter the longer I spoke, as I felt the weight of Jasper’s glower. Apparently there wasn’t anything wrong with his vision this morning.

“I would appreciate it if you would discuss major adjustments to our standing procedures with me before you act,” Jasper said in a villainously pleasant tone.

I winced. “Sorry.”

“Well, it is done now, for better or worse. What may we expect from him? Is he clever enough to maintain a deception? Brave enough to resist pressure?”

“Um...He said to meet him in the circus tent at noon,” I said, not really wanting to have to answer. “What time is it?”

Jasper pursed his lips. “Noon.”

“It’s...probably fine. Come on, let’s go see. Maybe he found something out!”

I was still tying my hood in place while we hurried outside. The weather was really too hot for a full cloak, and I managed to be almost glad about the new, nondescript outfit I was wearing.

But as we started down the street, I heard some familiar-sounding giggling, and I slammed my shoulder into Jasper’s to steer him into stopping at the nearest merchant’s stall.

Jasper managed not to fall over. “Wh—”

“Shh!” For once, I was the one to make a hissing sound.

I tugged at my hood and looked out of the corner of my eye. It was Serena and Jade, stopped right there at the next stall over, which seemed to be some kind of novelty costume business.

“It’s too bad we don’t have time to try on anything fun today,” Serena said. “Maybe we can come back sometime and take another look.”

“It’s rather windy up there, in any case. It would be a shame to lose our accessories over the ocean. Or worse yet, over a town!” Jade said. I snuck a better look and saw her running her fingers over a headband with bunny ears sticking off the top of it. She chuckled again, and Serena joined in.

The merchant at our stall launched into some kind of sales pitch about his wares, but I missed everything he said. Vaguely aware that I ought to try to look like a potential customer, I absently picked up a large clay pot and bowed my head over it.

“Come on, come on. Let’s get going before I boil to death,” Erik’s voice chimed in. I hugged the oversized crockery to my chest. I was distantly aware of Jasper doing something to the other side of me that involved jingling his coin purse.

“Sure you don’t want a dancer’s costume this time, Erik?” came Veronica’s voice. “Cool you right down.”

“Ha, ha. Very funny.”

They moved away, and I heard them pass behind me. I started to relax, but I stiffened again as a flash of purple moved into the edge of my vision.

“Dark skies, I can’t ever let her know about the casino in Octagonia,” I heard Dopple say quietly but emphatically. His voice grated on my ears, and I held my breath so as not to react aloud. He reached toward the bunny ears for an instant, then snatched his hand away and hurried off, his footsteps sharp as he rushed to catch up.

I stood there for a moment longer until Jasper turned toward me and said, “The pot is all yours. Shall we be on our way?”

“Huh?” I looked down at the generic storage pot in my arms.

“Come along. We have an appointment to keep, do we not?”

“Yeah. Right.” I followed him down the street and around the corner, in the opposite direction from Dopple and the crew.

“I suppose you did not, in fact, desperately and urgently require a new set of crockery, as I first perceived?” Jasper said.

“No. No, I didn’t.” I hefted the pot, set my sights on a relatively clean alleyway, and flung it to the ground. It shattered with a satisfying crash. “I can’t believe they don’t know it’s not me! Doesn’t he sound weird?”

Jasper made a tiny sound of protest over the pot, but he just sighed and shook his head. “He sounded exactly the same as you.”

“Seriously?”

“Perhaps your voice simply sounds different when you are not inside your own head. Whatever magic they used to imitate you, your voice was not a flaw in it.”

“Spirit of the Land, I sound like a dork.”

Jasper ignored that, and I couldn’t decide if I was glad or not. Instead, he said, “A casino in Octagonia? One that he wishes to keep secret?”

“Oh. Yeah. Yeah! We should go check it out!”

“Let us hope this is the break we have been waiting for.”

“Let’s do it!” Then the circus tent caught my eye. “After we meet Faris. I hope he’s okay.”

Jasper nodded and said, “Let us proceed with caution.” Then he led the way toward the circus with a cautious stance like he expected an ambush by deadly clowns.

  


* * *

  


I spotted a hooded figure at the same table as yesterday, and I sighed with relief. At least Faris hadn’t sprouted a stupid strain of courage and gotten himself hurt already.

I led the way up to join him. He brightened at the sight of me.

“Hello, friend! I have news for—oh my goodness, are you Sir Jasper?” Faris looked past me and nearly vibrated out of his chair, scrambling to his feet. 

Jasper bent his head and said, “Please, be seated, Your Highness, and have a care that you do not say my name so openly.”

“Of course, of course, Sir—my friend! Ha ha! I just called Sir Jasper my friend!” he whispered, nudging me in the ribs with an elbow. “And I met Sir Hendrik only this morning. Were it not for the larger problems at hand, this would surely be the best day of my life!”

I glanced over to see Jasper’s face darkening at the mention of Hendrik’s name, and I hurried to speak before him. “This morning? Did you meet all of them?”

“Yes, indeed! I admit, I was not expecting to face your nemesis so soon, but I gathered my courage, and I believe I acquitted myself very well.”

“What happened?”

“I have sent them on a quest!”

“What?”

Faris smiled and nodded. “Not bad for an improvisation, eh? One of my men had brought up a wish of collecting pep pips, and so when Dopple appeared—”

“Dopple,” Jasper muttered under his breath.

“—I decided to test him by sending him to retrieve a branch from the appropriate tree!”

“What?” I asked again, struggling to spot some rationale for Faris’s plan that would impress Jasper and get me out of hot water for breaking our secrecy.

“I must say, if you had not warned me in advance, I might have believed him to be you. But I was watching for any signs of how he might give himself away, and in the end, it was a simple enough matter to confirm his false identity. Shall I tell you how I knew?”

“Yes, please do!” I said, hoping for some terrible flaw we could use against Dopple. Even Jasper leaned forward.

Faris leaned in as well, eyes sparkling. “The giveaway was this: he did not seem to like me!”

“What?”

Faris beamed. “I believe I would have been rather hurt if I had thought him to be you. We have always gotten on well enough, have we not? And last night, I felt an even greater kinship with you. But your Dopple, now, he had hardly a kind word for me. After I entrusted him with my quest test, I thought perhaps he was annoyed. Irritable. Even angry! What kind of a hero is angry about accepting a quest from a prince of a kingdom beset by danger?”

“Uh…” I gave Jasper a quick glance. He wore a slightly pinched look around the eyes, but at least he wasn’t being rude. I looked back at Faris. “Okay. Did you find out anything else? What they wanted, why they were here?” 

“Well, you know, I did not wish to tip my hand by being too direct about it. I believe they were attempting to find out whether or not we knew anything about the Star, and of course I did not admit what I do know. They are none the wiser!” Faris winked.

“Okay. Uh. Good job,” I said.

Faris practically glowed. “That means a lot coming from you, friend.”

I tugged at my sleeves, feeling awkward, because I’d been exaggerating my approval a little, but if I said that to his face, I knew I’d have dreams about Mum scolding me for my manners for a week. “Uh, sure. Anyway, I guess we know where they’re going. Maybe. Where they might be going. If they’re really going to go questing after your request.”

“Do you think they won’t?” Faris tapped a finger to his lips. “Well, if you will check in with me in a few days, I will let you know if there is news. I shall make a visit to the circus every noon and midnight, so you will know where to find me!”

“I suppose it is within the realm of possibility that we could learn something, if they return to His Highness with the requested item,” Jasper said. I could barely hear any sarcasm in his voice.

“Indeed! I am honored to be of service,” Faris said cheerfully.

  


* * *

  


“So that was the prince of Gallopolis?” Jasper said as we walked down the street, looking for a discreet place to teleport away to Octagonia.

“Yeah, that’s Faris.”

“I suppose I should be glad that he appears to have succeeded at the bare minimum goal of not revealing our presence to the enemy.”

“Yeah.”

“He does seem taken with you. Perhaps we may use his sword arm someday, when the time comes.”

“Mm-hmm.”

Letting Jasper believe in Faris’s combat prowess somehow reminded me of the time I caught a baby slime in a jar and tried to convince Gemma we could train it in secret. It ended up escaping and leaving slime all over our shoes and the rug and the wall and mum’s good potholders, and Gemma slipped and tore her dress, and we both got grounded for a week, and Gemma was mad at me for twice as long.

But I couldn’t quite bring myself to speak poorly of Faris. Knowing there was a place to go where someone knew my problems and seemed to think of me as a friend held too strong an appeal to risk that friendship over slander, so I left Faris’s secrets alone, same as he’d just done for me.


	5. Chapter 5

I zoomed us off to the Octagonia, full of optimism that this was going to be more than another dead end, and we started trying to ask around to find the secret casino.

Knowing that Dopple was on the other side of the world at the moment, I forgot to be careful with my hood, at first.

“Hi, is there a—”

“Oh my lucky stars, it’s you! The champ! Can I have your autograph?”

“Uh, sure, here, okay. But do you know—”

“Oh, wait until I tell my friends!” The bystander rushed away.

“You did not warn me that you are famous here,” Jasper sighed. “Perhaps it would be better if I were to do the talking?”

“Okay, sure,” I said, tucking my hair a little more carefully under my hood.

Jasper had better luck getting people to hold a conversation, but not getting information out of anyone.

“A casino? What’s that?”

“A casino? Maybe you’re thinking of Puerto Valor.”

“A casino? I don’t think there is one, unless you count the bookie for the fights.”

“A casino? Man, that sounds kind of fun. Maybe we should have a casino.”

“A casino? That’s the second time today I’ve heard somebody asking about a casino. Let me know if you find out where it is, okay?”

“Oh! Golden Boy! Oh, wait, my mistake. You’re obviously too old to be him. Sorry, what were you saying about a casino?”

Jasper gritted his teeth at the last one. “Do not mistake me for some tween child.”

“Oh, no, Golden Boy is a grown man. Just not so old, and a little prettier. No offense.”

“Okay nevermind thanks!” I interjected and steered Jasper away before he started a fight. I could swear I heard him hissing as I pushed him toward the next target. “Maybe let me try a couple more with the hood on.”

I recognized Whambelina and decided to try my luck. “A casino? Yeah, I’ve been talking that up since I heard the idea this afternoon, too. Get some of the same thrill without the pain. Might be a nice change of pace,” she said.

And the real Golden Boy, who recognized me despite the hood. “Oh, hey, Champ. Yeah, I’m starting to get kinda into the casino idea everyone’s been talking about today, myself. We could have a little stage on the side and put on some fabulous shows. People are a little down on tournaments ever since the thing with the old Champ, anyway. Hey, you still hanging out with Sylv? Not that your new friend’s not cute, but I’m not sure he has the right sort of stage presence to really draw a decent crowd.”

Jasper was hissing again, so I made an excuse and pulled him away again.

I accidentally walked us past a man shouting, or rather chanting, near the entrance to town, and I realized it was the Underdigger. “No! Ca! Si! No! No—Hey! Hey Champ,” he called. “Have you heard about this new casino plan? It ain’t right! The MMA tournament is the lifeblood of this town! It’s our livelihoods! Wot’re we gonna do with a casino instead?”

Jasper rolled his eyes and said, “Perhaps you could turn your muscle to something more useful than play-fighting. Has no one called for your aid since the monsters have grown stronger?”

I opened my mouth to try to apologize for Jasper’s rudeness, but I got distracted by a horrible thought. “There’s still a cave full of monsters under the orphanage, isn’t there? Has anyone checked on that since the Dark Star came down?”

The MMA fighter stared at us in silence, then exclaimed, “Blimey, you’re right. What are we all worryin’ about a casino for, or the arena neither? We oughtta go clean that place out. Ain’t fair to the Champ to leave him to guard the door by himself with who-knows-wot down there. Don’t you worry your head about it, New Champ. We got this one.”

He ran off, leaving us alone in the middle of the street. I watched him go, and for a second I felt a little better that I’d solved a problem before it started.

But as we continued our inquiries through the rest of the city, we only got more of the same.

“I’m starting to think there really isn’t a casino in town,” I said.

“Indeed, it appears to have been a false lead, or one beyond our capacity to follow,” Jasper said sourly.

“Great. So, what now? We just jump around some more, asking if anyone’s seen them lately, and hope we don’t collide?” I glared up at the giant statue of Hendrik, my earlier good mood gone flat.

“We might as well, until we come up with a better plan. Unless you believe you can predict where they are going to be at any point in the future?”

“No. Probably. No.”

  


* * *

  


That was a lie, and I got grumpier and grumpier over the secret of it, until Jasper called me on it two days and several jumps later.

“This is stupid,” I grumbled after a stint in Hotto. “We aren’t getting anywhere. We might as well march ourselves back into Heliodor’s dungeons and take a nap for as much good as we’re doing.”

Jasper raised an eyebrow. “As flattering as the imitation is, I fear it will do you no great favors to adopt my personality,” he drawled.

“I probably know where they’re going to be tonight,” I said, the secret finally flopping out of me like a spilled pile of dirty laundry.

“Oh?” Jasper loaded a whole scolding of reproval and expectation into the word.

“The campsite at Dundrasil.”

Jasper frowned. “Dundrasil?”

“Yeah.”

“Why Dundrasil?”

I sighed. “Because after the last time we went there, Rab made a comment about how it was a shame I never even got to celebrate one birthday there, and I said we should go back there for my next birthday, and it’s my birthday today.”

  


* * *

  


"Crawling in the dirt like worms. Well, I suppose it cannot be helped. Just as well that there is already no dignity left to me in any case," Jasper muttered as he crawled under the bush next to me and settled on the ground.

I sighed morosely. My only companion, grumpy as usual, hadn’t offered me so much as a Happy Birthday. I didn’t mind the dirt, but I already knew I wasn’t going to have a good time trying to sit by and spy today.

It wasn’t long before the group showed up, just as I’d predicted. 

Dopple made like he was going to help set up camp, but the group laughed and waved him away, and he sat down on a log with a particularly smug looking smile. I folded my arms under my chin and ground my teeth together as Serena started mixing up some batter in a pot, and Jade headed off Veronica’s offer to make dinner, and Erik sat down right next to Dopple and bumped shoulders with him. 

It might have been okay if I could have grumbled to Jasper about it. If I ever wanted to hear some of Jasper’s snark, I could have really used some of it right then, directed at Dopple, while the jerk winked at Erik and played cards with everyone and ate my friends’ cooking and clapped along to Sylv’s music.

But we were close enough to more or less hear the birthday congratulations and the jokes and general good cheer, and I managed to remember that that meant we were close enough for them to hear me if I said anything aloud. So I laid in the bushes and watched my birthday party happen without me, and I hated every minute of it.

“This is nice,” Dopple said in his stupid version of my voice that apparently actually sounded like me. “I feel a little guilty taking the time away from—”

“Hey!” “Nuh-uh!” “Don’t say it!” came several interruptions.

“Other things! Which I’m not going to talk about because I promised I wouldn’t,” Dopple said, laughing an annoying laugh.

I dropped my forehead against my wrist for a minute in aggravation. Not only had I just spent an hour watching my friends be nice to the mystery bandit who stole my life, but now they were admitting they specifically weren’t going to reveal any of their plans tonight? Had he planned this whole thing to be as irritating as possible? 

I heard Jasper whisper, “El. Hendrik is coming this way,” and I lifted my head, shocked to see the gigantic knight heading directly for our hiding spot.

"Oh, horseturds!” I whispered back. “I forgot this is the place we used for our, our business last time we used the camp!"

"What?" Jasper muted his shriek halfway through the word and it turned into a squeak that would have been really funny if I wasn't worried about Dopple. "And you made us lie on the ground, here?" he added in a hiss.

"I don't think anyone’s used it lately. It's dry and I don't smell anything."

Jasper made another strangled sound and appeared to be trying to levitate through sheer force of will. He only made it onto his toes and fingertips, which was still a little impressive, but it apparently wasn't enough to make him happy. "Get us out of here!"

"I can't Zoom us from here, he'll see. Let's back up and go around that building first."

Jasper hissed incomprehensible words under his breath as he crab-walked himself out of sight. Me, I figured it was all just dirt by now -- I guess helping to take fertilizer out to the farm gives you a little perspective -- so I didn't worry too much, myself, just lowered my head and rolled out after him.

Jasper looked even more horrified when I grabbed his wrist in order to take him along in the teleportation spell, but there wasn't time to negotiate. I zoomed us away to the first place I thought of, the campsite back by Heliodor.

Jasper snatched his arm away, then scrambled up to survey our surroundings. "No. Baths. Immediately. Hotto? Hotto." He sighed and held out his arm again for me, his eyes screwed shut.

I rolled my own eyes while he wasn’t looking, but I teleported us anyway.

  


* * *

  


I managed to keep my thoughts to myself as I stomped after Jasper through the middle of Hotto, and while he made me wash my hands and face and change into the fresh guest clothes. I kept it all in right up until we shut the door in the sauna, and then I exploded.

“That should be my birthday party!” I shouted. “With my friends! Those are my presents, and that’s my favorite game, and Serena made that weird looking cake-in-a-pot for me! Why does he get everything I’m supposed to have, and I have nothing! This is the worst birthday I’ve ever had, and I hate him so much.”

I gritted my teeth and pressed my hands over my eyes, trying to blot away the stupid tears before Jasper saw. When I lowered my hands, I could see out of the corner of my eye that Jasper was looking in my direction.

“We do not always get what we want. Or what we deserve. Sometimes, you must determine something else to want, and then take the steps to make it happen for yourself.” He was silent for a moment, leaving me trying to figure out the puzzle of what he meant to say and whether or not he meant it in a scornful way, but before I had a clue, he said, “Without considering people, what is the thing that you value most about a birthday celebration?”

I scowled down at the ground. Jasper only waited. I snuck another glance at him. He wasn’t sneering after all. If anything, I kind of thought he actually wanted to hear the answer. So I answered. “Food, I guess. I always got to pick dinner. And there’d be cake.”

“You have the means to travel to anywhere in the world. Is there nowhere that you have enjoyed a purchased meal?”

“Oh. Uh. I guess.” I thought about it. “The bar here in Hotto was pretty good.”

“Then let us go there, once we have finished here.”

“I don’t think they have cake, though. I dunno where...” I trailed off, remembering Serena waxing poetic about the sweets in Gondolia. But Gondolia had some complicated memories. Fighting Jasper. Jasper’s villainous monologuing. Erik’s captivity. Rescuing Erik.

Stupid Erik, having a stupid party for stupid Dopple. It had to be Erik’s idea to play that game. He was the only one I’d taught it to, and Dopple couldn’t have known about something so specific to Cobblestone.

“If you have no other preference, I would highly recommend the bakery in Gondolia,” Jasper said, echoing my thoughts. “Ah, that is, if it is not...Well. You could drop me at the gates and I could fetch something, if you would rather not spend time in my company in that town.”

“Um. It’s okay. We could go there.”

  


* * *

  


I spent dinner talking about past birthday parties, judging that Jasper didn’t want to hear me rant about Dopple anymore, and Jasper made only polite noises throughout. I figured he was humoring me, or maybe tuning me out, but I kept talking, because I needed to at least pretend like I was hanging out with somebody who cared.

But then I followed him to the cake shop in Gondolia, and he went to the counter on his own, and he came back with a sampler plate of six different flavors and set them in front of me.

“The strawberry is my favorite, but you should try a variety while we are here.”

“Oh. Okay. Thank you.”

“Happy Birthday, Eleven.”

I opened my mouth, a little shocked to realize that he even knew my full name, never mind that he’d actually wished me a happy birthday. “Thanks, Jasper,” I managed after a few seconds.

He nodded, and looked down to start on his own single slice.

I started in on the chocolate, and I found that the exchange had surprised me far enough out of my funk to notice that the dessert was actually delicious.

I took a few more bites, switching to raspberry and then lemon flavors, and I tried to sneak looks at Jasper to judge if he was still paying any attention to me. I thought about going back to the topic I really wanted to rant about after the birthday surveillance.

Then he glanced up while I was looking, and our eyes met, and I impulsively blurted out, “I like Erik, you know. I mean. I like, like him.”

“I see.”

“He doesn’t know. I don’t know if he likes me back.”

“Mm.”

“He’s really nice to me. We have all these jokes that nobody else gets, and we fight really well together, and I know he worries about keeping me safe. We didn’t even travel together for a year, and I think maybe he knows me better than Gemma. My best friend from Cobblestone.”

“Hmm.”

“But I’m not sure he even sees me as anything other than a friend. Or if he wants anything much to do with me besides saving the world. He calls me his partner, but I think maybe he just means it like adventuring buddies.”

The sense that Jasper wasn’t very invested in the conversation finally overpowered my nervous speech, and anyway I was out of anything useful to say about it, so I fell silent and stared into my plate for a minute.

Then Jasper sighed and said, “Unrequited love is a burden. Look to yourself, first. Consider who you wish to be on your own, and do not define yourself by anyone else. I suppose your story may end differently than...one that ends in failure, but I do not think it will harm your chances of it if you choose to center your life on more than love alone.”

I stared at Jasper, shocked again by the fact that he was talking to me about anything other than our mission. Not to mention that this was twenty times as much of a pep talk as I’d ever really expected to hear from him. Or that the word “love” had actually come out of his mouth. “Have you ever been in love?” I asked, curious.

Jasper’s mouth moved like he’d bitten into a lemon. “Not in any way that matters,” he said curtly.

“Oh. Sorry.”

“As I said, it does not matter.”

“That’s not what you said.”

“Well. It does not matter.” He cleared his throat and said, “So? Supposing you save the world, what will you make of yourself after that?”

“Oh. Man, do I have to think about that? I’m not even getting anywhere on saving the world in a hurry.”

Jasper’s mouth quirked upwards. “It may be your birthday, and you may have been a man grown for a year, but you are also still a child. We have only traveled together for a matter of days, and you are prepared to give up because it is taking too long?”

“Didn’t say I was gonna give up,” I muttered.

“I have pursued some plans for years on end.”

“Years?”

“Indeed.”

“How old are you, anyway?”

“Hm. Old enough.” He gave me a quelling look, then briskly changed the subject. “So? What will you do, if you become free to choose your life’s path?”

I frowned in thought. “Huh. Maybe I’d like to build things. Fix up Cobblestone. Or help with Dundrasil. I know Rab kind of wanted to do that someday. Might be nice to help him out.”

“Build things.”

“Yeah. Put them together instead of always knocking them down. I mean, fighting’s kind of fun sometimes when it’s just monsters, but I feel like I might be done with it by the time all this is over. Smithing stuff was pretty fun, if I still had the forge. So I think I’d like to try making something else, like houses.”

“The destined savior of the world wishes to become a carpenter.”

“What’s wrong with it?” I muttered defensively.

“Nothing, I suppose. Perhaps my own story would have turned out as well or better if I had pursued my own non-military interests when I was your age, rather than following the path laid out for me.” His mouth pressed flat for a moment, and he added, “I still do not how one moment of weakness disqualified me so utterly. I was still a worthy heir. I remember every lesson he taught me on governance. How to achieve power and hold it, and how to maintain order. I did everything right, up until that one moment.”

“Mordegon made you his heir?” I asked, slightly surprised after spending so much time with Jade and thinking of her as a princess.

“He always told me that he would. Said it was signed into a secret document. He wouldn’t tell me where, or who knew where to find it.” He stared down at his half-finished cake, holding his fork at rest on the plate.

“Oh.”

“I realize you may not approve of all my methods, but I believe I would have been a strong king. I would keep order, and I would see Heliodor recognized as first among nations. The kingdom would prosper under my reign.” He sighed. “I suppose that is not to be.”

I cut a bite-sized piece of cake in half with my fork, and then halved it again, feeling awkward about actually putting it in my mouth while Jasper looked so down. I couldn’t think of a way to cheer him up about the whole disinheritance-murder thing, so I decided to try and change the subject.

“So, um, what were you into? When you were my age?”

“What?”

“The non-military interests you mentioned?”

“It hardly matters now.”

“Come on, you can’t just hint at it and then not tell me,” I said, because a minute ago he’d been talking to me like a real person, and I’d been lonely enough that I really wanted this to go back to being a friendly sort of conversation. It was my birthday, after all.

“It was merely a frivolous pursuit.”

“Come on. I just told you I wanted to be a builder, and I let you laugh at that.”

“I did not laugh. I was merely amused by the contrast between what the world would expect of someone with a legendary destiny and what you came up with.”

“Okay, well, I won’t laugh either.”

“Oh, very well, if you wish to hear it so badly. I once wished to write epic poetry. A far cry from the ambitions into which I grew, later, but there you have it.”

“Epic poetry?”

“A long form of storytelling that is written in verse. I found the structure of it to be rather beautiful, and I fancied the idea of telling my own stories,” he said in a faintly scornful, self-deprecating tone.

“Poetry, huh. Sounds like you’d like Nautica,” I said.

“What is Nautica?”

“Oh! I never told you about the mermaid kingdom yet?”

“The what?”

“The mermaid kingdom! They all speak in rhymes. Sylv said it was, umm. I-am-a-hippo meter? Some poetry thingy.”

Jasper stared at me with an incredulous face, like I’d gifted him a birthday present and it contained a note that said “I.O.U. One Hour Cleaning The Stables Together.” At least, it looked a lot like the face Gemma’s grandpa had made the year I gave him a gag gift like that. I was kind of glad that day that I’d had a good present to give him to make up for it, because even I felt a little bad about the prank after that face.

“Iambic?” Jasper managed.

“That sounds right.”

“Heptameter?” he said after a longer pause.

“Probably?”

“And mermaids.”

“Yup!”

“Half fish, half human, lives in the ocean.”

“Uh huh. Wait, are there other kinds of mermaids?”

“I would not have said that there were any kinds of mermaids.”

“Oh, yeah, there definitely are. A whole town of them at least. They’re all really pretty ladies, even though they’re pretty old. I guess they don’t age like humans, so they all look like normal adult women. On top, I mean. From the waist up.”

Jasper muttered, “Sounds like Hendrik’s kind of place.”

“Uh, if you say so? I don’t think he’d exactly fit in, based on what I’ve seen of him. I don’t think there even are any mermen, actually, or anyway not ones that look like half human men. There’s sort of fish-men, with fishy looking faces.”

“I think perhaps I am inclined to believe you, if only because I cannot conceive of you fabricating so many details at once.”

“Hey, I could make stuff up if I wanted to,” I said, reflexively defending myself. “Once, I convinced Gemma there was a hair fairy, like the tooth fairy, to come and collect any stray hairs they found on your pillow, but it had to be a good hair, no broken ends. She didn’t figure it out until her grandpa asked why she was lining up loose strands of hair along the edges of her pillow before bed one night.”

Jasper leaned back in his chair and adjusted the lock of hair that was always falling into his face. “Do you truly wish to convince me that you are a skilled liar right after I have questioned the truth of your story?” he asked with a small smile.

“Um. No.” I stuffed a bite of cake into my mouth so I wouldn’t have to say anything else for a moment, feeling slightly embarrassed.

“Hm.” Jasper kept the smile, and a moment later, he offered, “That does remind me of the time in our youth when I told Hendrik that buzzberries were so named because they were baby bees. He never loved the fruit in the first place, but he refused to eat them or even go near the trees for years after that.”

I think I surprised both of us by laughing. “Hendrik? Really?”

“He has always had an aversion to insects. Even now, he will move half a dozen paces to avoid a moth, if he can come up with any manly excuse for it.”

“I would never have guessed.”

“When the princess was just old enough to walk, she found a beetle in the garden and dropped it into his hands, and she thought the noise he made was so hilarious that she kept bringing him insects for months.” His smile wavered a little, but he lifted his fork and took a bite of his own cake, and he added, “I taught her to catch them in a jar, later, and we started leaving the jar on his desk. So we still got to laugh about it, but he wasn’t so jumpy when we spent time outdoors.”

I grinned and countered, “Gemma and I got banned from taking jars out of the house for a while after we used them for frogs.”

I wasn’t sure exactly what I’d done to unlock a Jasper who wanted to swap stories of childhood pranks, but he allowed the conversation to continue along the same lines for a whole lot longer than I expected. It turned out that we both had a ton of stories like that. Apparently kid Jasper and kid me had way more in common than I thought.

He still seemed a little bit sad some of the time, talking about his childhood, but mostly nostalgic, and I managed to avoid any potential major blunders like “too bad you can’t go back” or “you really care about Hendrik and Jade, don’t you?” I actually had fun talking to him, and I thought that maybe he had fun too, at least a little.

Jasper ordered us a second round of cake and some kind of fizzy drinks as we talked, and by the end of the night, I decided it wasn’t actually the worst possible birthday after all.


	6. Chapter 6

“We gonna chase them again? They’re probably still at the Dundrasil camp this morning, but who knows where they’ll go next.”

Jasper turned away from the window letting in the morning light in the Gondolian inn where we were staying, and he folded his arms. “Whatever their plans, it appears they do not have the utmost urgency. The only thing I can see that has changed is they carry some new equipment, which implies their strength is growing. And the rate at which we are finding any information about them with our current methods is unimpressive.”

“Yeah,” I said gloomily. “At this rate, even if we knew all their plans, we couldn’t beat them anyway.”

“Exactly. Thus, I believe that we should change our current strategic plan. If we cannot learn their weakness, we should spend time building our strength. I propose that today should be a day of training.”

“Oh,” I said, perking up a little. I knew Jasper was a way better fighter than me. If he cared enough to invest in making me better than I was, I definitely wanted to learn from him. And it sounded way, way better than flailing around and accomplishing nothing, the way we’d been doing. “Okay, let’s do it.”

  


* * *

  


By lunchtime, we’d cut a path through the angry monsters swarming outside Gondolia, and I’d worked up an appetite trying to clear a safe space to stop and have a picnic.

“Still dunno how you keep track of two swords so well,” I said around a mouthful of sandwich.

“Please, wait until you have swallowed before you speak,” Jasper said, but there was no real bite behind the scolding. “It is not much more difficult than learning to use a shield effectively. A matter of practice and muscle memory. It becomes useful for an offensive style when you gain enough experience to track more than one foe at a time.”

“Do you think I could learn it?”

Jasper tilted his head. “Perhaps. But we should go over the basics of it another time, where there is less danger to you in the beginner’s phase.”

“Yeah, I guess so.” I looked at the little cluster of hornet creatures in the distance and remembered letting one of their kind past my guard earlier. I rubbed the hole in my shirt where I’d had to heal the sting. “Would’ve been in trouble a few times already trying to get this far without you.”

Jasper gave a matter-of-fact nod. “You have good potential, and your healing magic gives you an edge, but your footwork still needs adjustment, and you are not yet a master of your weapon. I am, but I would not give either of us favorable odds if we had to face Hendrik in one-on-one combat today.”

“Mm-hmm,” I said, politely keeping my mouth closed around the last bite of sandwich. I wasn’t really bothered by his assessment. I knew I wasn’t the most experienced fighter. And lunch was more urgent. I swallowed and reached into my bag to pull out a slightly squashed paper-wrapped bundle. “Oops. You were right about the box idea. Oh well, I bet it still tastes good.”

I delicately unwrapped the cake and did my best to eat it off the paper without getting it all over my hands and face. Jasper produced his own slice, safely preserved in a little wooden box, along with a small wooden fork with a detachable handle.

“Man, you were right. The cake in Gondolia is so good. Even after mushing it up, this cake — ” I pointed at dramatically at the cake, then back at the city — “From that bakery, is the best cake I’ve ever eaten. Even better than Mum’s cake. Sorry, Mum. It’s just that good.”

Jasper glanced back at the city, and nodded while he finished his own bite. “It would not go amiss to return again soon. When one is upon a difficult mission, there is no sense to deny oneself what simple pleasures there are to be found. If the world’s best cake is at hand, seize it and enjoy it.”

“Mmm,” I agreed. “World’s best cake.”

I heard a creepy voice quietly screech the word, “Caaake.”

I jumped and fumbled to catch the last glob of cake in my hands. “What the…”

Jasper was already on his feet with his cake box in one hand and a sword in the other. “Smogbonnet. Odd. Not the normal region for those. Whatever is affecting the monsters must be driving them to new territory as well.”

I pulled free my sword, too. Feeling bold after the morning’s many little victories, or maybe just because of Jasper’s presence at my side, I gestured at the city with my cake hand, waved my weapon at the monster, and shouted, “You want cake, little smogbonnet? Then go to the bakery and buy it yourself! This is our cake!”

It made another weird noise that could have been rage or jealousy or polite agreement, for all I knew what went on in a monster’s head. It slowly backed away before running into the foliage.

“Is that the first one that’s run from us all day?” I asked with a frown.

“I believe so. Perhaps it took your recommendation to heart,” Jasper said.

I was pretty sure that was dry humor I heard in his voice, and I suddenly felt fairly pleased with life. We’d just won a couple dozen fights in a row, monsters were running from us, we had access to amazing cake, and Jasper was turning into a friend who not only believed in my potential but was starting to joke with me. Maybe we didn’t have an answer about how to protect the world, but it felt like we were finally doing something for this corner of it, and making ourselves better in the process.

I took the time to lick the cake paper clean, and then I turned to Jasper. “We’re gonna keep going, right?”

“Let us do so. Your endurance is respectable, at least.”

  


* * *

  


I went to bed that night feeling tired, accomplished, and full of yet more cake. Even Sylv and the twins always talked everyone out of eating sweets three times in two days, but not Jasper.

But then I woke up in the middle of the night to the sound of screaming.

I flailed my way out of bed and tried to kick off the blankets wrapped around one of my legs as I staggered towards the window. Jasper overtook me and yanked the curtains aside.

“What is it? What’s going on?” I slurred through my half-awake panic.

“Monsters,” he said curtly.

Well, this was why I still slept fully dressed in decent daywear, anywhere I went. I jammed my feet into my boots, because Mum would never let me hear the end of it if I let my boots touch clean sheets, and I was barely behind Jasper as we ran out onto the dim nighttime streets of Gondolia.

We heard another scream, and I was the one to lead Jasper in a charge towards a heavily muscled sailor. The man had fallen to his knees and was trembling with his hands on his head, his back turned to a group of shadowy shapes bouncing down the street.

“Please help me!” squeaked the very large man. I guessed the muscles were for lifting, not smashing.

“Get up! Get inside!” I shouted at him, pointing back toward the inn, and I stepped past him, sword at the ready.

“Go! Now!” I heard Jasper add.

I caught a gleam of green eyes, and then the shadows came into the pool of light around the nearest streetlamp.

“Smogbonnets, again?” Jasper said.

“Caaaaake,” said the smogbonnet.

“What?” I exclaimed. “Are you the same one? Hang on, you can talk? Do you really just want some cake?”

“Caaaake!” it screeched again. Then it bared its fangs and somersaulted through the air at me.

I might have taken a hit, but Jasper knocked it back with a sword and it fell short of reaching me. I tried to swat it away with the flat of my blade, still hoping to negotiate, but its friend opened its mouth and spewed some kind of poisonous looking gas at us, and I had to hold my breath instead.

Jasper and I backed up a little. I found the civilian had run off in the meantime, to my relief.

“Three smogbonnets. How did they get through the city gates?” I wondered.

“Time to wonder later,” Jasper said, and he whirled forward with both swords.

The monsters were tougher than the others we’d fought in the swamp, and whatever hesitation the cake-hungry monster had at noon was apparently gone. All three of them fought with malicious intent, and I got the impression that if they couldn’t find cake to eat, humans would do.

We managed to take them down, but it was a tough fight. My arms felt like rubber, pushing through that fight after the long day of plowing through the swamp monsters.

But I looked across the water, and I spotted way too many more monsters streaming down the road. I exclaimed, “There’s more of them!”

A dozen, maybe, and then more still coming in through the city gates. I caught sight of a great, hulking beast or two, which maybe explained how the gates got open, and there was more variety in shapes and sizes besides that. Had they all followed the first creature as some kind of Cake Prophet?

The monster parade was advancing towards a cluster of people huddled on the road. A kid broke free of the group to brandish a stick at the monsters, forcing a parent to chase them in the wrong direction and grab them.

My feet started moving before my mouth caught up to say, “Let’s go, Jasper!” I started running toward the nearest bridge, hoping to cut the monsters off.

“Wait!” Jasper called. But I heard his footsteps after me, and he caught up so that we plowed together into the first two monsters in the lineup just as they reached the other end of the bridge, just a few paces away from the townsfolk.

“Back off!” I yelled.

I got a chorus of weird and horrible monster noises in return. None of them sounded much like baked goods, and I felt a little better about the morality of fighting these creatures.

Then one of the hulking monsters charged forward and knocked me back two paces, and I started to feel kinda worried from a basic survival standpoint.

“Jasper, there’s a lot of them,” I called as he used one sword to get the brute’s attention and the other to knock a smogbonnet into the canal.

“I had, in fact, noticed that,” he answered curtly.

“Can we take them all?” I stepped forward and stabbed at something in a suit of armor, or maybe it was just an animated suit of armor. My sword just slid off of it, and I had to fling myself roughly against a building to dodge its parry.

“Uncertain. Be prepared to retreat.” He kept jabbing the hulk with a sword and then darting out of reach, like he was searching for a weak spot.

“But there are people in danger. We can’t leave them.”

“Tch.” Jasper finally launched a heavy attack, using both swords to hack at the big monster. It fell, but he left himself open to attack from the mystery armor and another smogbonnet, and he fell back coughing after another breath attack. I winced and cast a healing spell for him.

Jasper straightened up as the magic landed and said sharply over his shoulder, “If you must help them, then do it. I can slow the advance, but not stop it.”

“Right.” I lowered my sword, turned, and ran over to the group of people. “Everyone okay? Can you get somewhere safe?”

“I want to go home,” wailed a small child with the group.

“If they broke through the city gates, what is to keep them from breaking into our homes?” said a woman in an apron.

I heard someone shouting across the canal, and I could just barely make out what they were saying. “The harbor! To the harbor!”

I wasn’t the only one who heard. “The harbor! If we can make it out to sea, we will be safe from these monsters!” exclaimed a man in the group next to me. “Come on, this way!” He started up the stairs between buildings.

“Good, we’ll hold the monsters off while you go!” I answered. I looked around to make sure all the kids had someone’s hand to hold and everyone was moving, and then I turned back to help Jasper.

He was looking a bit worse for wear, holding the blade from one of the mock-knight creatures between his own two swords and trying to fend off a smogbonnet with his foot, and I cast another healing spell as I took a few steps in his direction. “That group’s clear!”

Jasper grunted acknowledgement and sprang backwards to free himself from the standstill. “Now can we go? There are too many for us to defeat on our own.”

“Right,” I said, and I stepped forward to put my hand on Jasper’s shoulder to teleport us away.

But then I looked at the swarm of monsters, seeping into the town where they didn’t belong, and I had the horrible thought: was this how Dundrasil fell? And Zwaardsrust?

Was this my fault, summoning the horde with a rumor of cake?

I didn’t know all the details of Dundrasil’s fall. Maybe there had been a cake in my honor that day, since I guess I was some kind of prince, and the monsters had swarmed looking for a good dessert then, too.

And I knew there was no way everyone was already out of the city. Some Luminary I was, if I let the people of the city be hurt by monsters I’d summoned, myself. Might as well go ham with Sylv’s special eyeliner and call myself the Darkspawn after all.

So I took a deep breath, and I said, “We need to help get everyone else out.”

“What?”

“We need to evacuate everyone. Are you strong enough to hold them here for a couple more minutes?”

Jasper made an irritated sound, but he snapped, “Go, then!”

I spun and dashed up the stairs, figuring the back doors of the houses were going to be a safer bet. I pounded on the first door I reached.

No answer. Only, I heard voices inside.

“Hello?” I called. “Come outside, quick! We’re evacuating!”

“Is it safe?” asked an old woman’s voice through the shuttered windows.

“Pretty safe, if you hurry, but it’s not going to get any safer if you don’t come out now!”

The door creaked open and a gray-haired lady limped out. “Where are we going?”

“The harbor.” I sure hoped it was a good plan.

“Nonna? Nonna!” A younger man ran towards us from the direction of the harbor, and he stopped in front of us, gasping. He demanded, “Where are you taking my grandmother? It is too dangerous!”

“It’s too dangerous to stay! Can you evacuate her out to sea?”

The man looked over his shoulder at the sound of a particularly loud clang coming from Jasper’s direction. He seemed to make a quick decision, and he said, “Nonna, come on. We’ll go out on the fishing boat.”

“You got her?” I asked, backing away.

“Yes. Thanks.”

The next house held a little family. I got them to come outside with no trouble, but then I heard a roar from the wrong direction.

“Run!” I said to the family, and I braced myself to meet the monster’s charge.

That wasn’t the best idea I ever had. I went flying and landed in somebody’s windowsill flowerbed, just ahead of the folks I was rescuing.

The flowerbed broke and dropped me to the ground. Trying to catch my wind, I wheezed, “Keep going! I’ll try...something.”

The good news was, I didn’t have to tell them twice. The parents picked up the kids and sprinted away.

Bad news was, I was definitely outclassed to fight this monster one-on-one, and it was still charging me. I rolled out of the way just in time to avoid becoming a pancake.

Which meant the monster was now running after the group I was trying to protect.

I found my voice and desperately improvised by shouting, “Hey! Hey, monster! Over here! I’m full of cake! Cake and lightning!” I cast a zap spell.

The monster tried to turn without stopping, and it smashed into an unattended merchant’s stall. I winced and hoped there hadn’t been anything too valuable stored in the wreckage. Then it bounced away, set its sights on me, growled, and charged again.

I yelped and started running away from it, because I really wasn’t looking forward to taking another hit from it.

In fact, I was afraid it was faster than me. I ducked into a side street, hoping the thing would have trouble turning again. Then I spotted a pile of crates irregularly stacked there alongside the house, and I remembered the last time I’d needed to quickly find safety in this town. I scrambled up the crates and threw myself flat against the roof and prayed that the thing would pass me by.

Maybe Somebody or Another was listening, because the monster crashed into the corner of the opposite house, leaving an unsightly dent, then shook itself and briskly continued down the side street.

I took an instant to catch my breath. Then I heard Jasper’s voice shouting, “Eleven?”

I hurried to my feet, put my sword away so I could use both arms for balance, and hurried along the rooftops as Jasper shouted my name again. I almost shouted back, but I didn’t really want to lure the monsters onto the rooftops with me, so I hurried towards his voice.

But then I spotted him running along the street, the way I’d come, a group of monsters streaming along several paces behind him. I winced to see the visible injuries he’d taken, and I ducked low to cast a small healing spell, hoping the light of the magic wouldn’t show my hiding spot, and I shadowed him along the rooftops as he approached the side street.

He ducked around the corner, following my route as I’d hoped, and I hissed as loud as I dared, “Jasper! Climb up here!”

He skidded to a halt and looked up. I waved, hoping my silhouette would be visible to him against the stars.

Whether he could see me or not, he climbed up the crates and crouched down at my side just before the monsters rounded the bend, and together we crept back along the roof.

“You are well?” he whispered to me.

“I’m fine. You okay?”

“Well enough, for singlehandedly facing down a monster horde. Hah. I shudder to think what praise Hendrik would offer for such a foolhardy stand.”

“Want another heal?”

“Not here. Let us retreat and rest.” He offered his arm, and I started to reach for him out of reflex.

But I stopped and curled my fingers over empty air. “I only made it to two houses.”

“You could hardly have done more in the time I was able to buy.” He looked at my face, and it was hard to tell in the low light, but I thought he rolled his eyes. But his voice was level and persuasive as he said, “We should consider recruiting more men to our command, and after we have some troops of our own, we can offer aid in situations like this. For now, our strength is not enough.”

“We can’t just leave.”

“We cannot do more. Look.” He led the way to the edge of the roof overlooking the canal and the larger part of the town. The horde had spread out, and monsters ran amok all over the place, a lot like that time Gemma and I brought the jar full of frogs to the church for the priest to try and convert and then we dropped the jar.

But I also still saw lights in a lot of the windows, and I thought I saw another group of shadowy figures hiding on a rooftop across the canal.

Then inspiration struck me. “Listen. You remember when you came here before? When you were still trying to catch me?” I asked Jasper, breaking our unspoken agreement to avoid the subject of our past conflicts.

“Yes,” he answered curtly.

“There are a whole lot of side streets and rooftop paths and buildings with multiple exits in this town. That’s how we got around all your guards back then. I think if we take it slow and we’re careful about it, we could move around and still help people get out of here, without having to fight everything.”

Jasper didn’t answer, just stared down at the town. I looked over at him, worried, and wondered whether a speech about heroism would go over well or not. But while the idea felt possible with his help, I seriously doubted my ability to get anyone out safe on my own.

Finally he pinched the bridge of his nose and sighed. “I suppose if my former master chose to dispose of me like a rat, I may as well scurry about in the dark like one. So be it. Where will you have us go, bold and noble Luminary?”

He managed to convey an awful lot of mockery into his tone, given that we were still whispering, but at least he was agreeing to help, so I took the question at face value. “I remember seeing a ladder over there. If one of us makes a distraction on that street, they could keep going and escape up the ladder while the other one gets people out of that house.”

Jasper raised his head, and I thought his posture might have gone from resigned to interested. “Is there anywhere else you recall roof access? And we should identify places where a group can hide.”

I was ready to rush back into the streets, but Jasper kept me there through a thorough interrogation about strategically useful features of the town’s layout, and I started to see the bigger picture. By the time we ventured off the roofs, I was actually feeling confident that we had a good plan, instead of desperately fearing we didn’t.

  


* * *

  


It was a long night, with a dozen close calls, but we found two dozen more groups of civilians, and we managed to extract them from the city, group by group. We worked out a path that went through two unlocked buildings and a couple of rooftops to reach the stairs that led back to the harbor, and from there it was a matter of waiting for the monsters to mill out of the way.

It helped that we weren’t the only ones trying to organize people. We found the mayor with the other rooftop group I’d spotted earlier, and he cut right down on the amount of time I had to spend trying to persuade people to leave their homes. I didn’t think he quite recognized me in the dark, but he let me help out, which was probably for the best all around. A couple other adults near my age started helping out the rest of the group, and all I had to do most of the time was point out the escape route.

We went with the last group to the harbor, where the pre-dawn light showed that the handful of boats still docked were nearly full.

“Come on,” called one of the men who had been handling the ropes. I thought he might have been a fisherman who owned the boat. “There’s still room.”

I eyed the overcrowded vessel, and I looked at Jasper. Jasper looked back, gave his head a slight shake at me, and then answered, “We will find our own safety.”

I nodded and held up a hand in farewell. “Stay safe, okay?”

“Are you sure? We won’t be here, later.”

“We’ll be fine,” I said, and I followed Jasper away from the waterfront. We turned a corner around a concealing stack of crates.

“Well? Are you satisfied now?” Jasper asked me.

“Yeah. Think we got everyone. I’m ready to pass out.”

“Then let us go.”

Maybe it was a testament to how exhausted I was, or how alarming the monsters had been, that the first safe place I thought of was Gallopolis, but that’s where I teleported us.

I stuck out my tongue at the Dark Star on the way to the inn, and when we got to our rooms, I gave up after one boot and just left the other foot sticking off the edge of the bed so it wouldn’t dirty the sheets, and that was the last I remembered.


	7. Chapter 7

“Hello, friends! Oh. Oh, I am so sorry. Were you sleeping?”

I groaned from the spot on the floor where I’d fallen out of bed in reaction to Faris’s exuberant and completely unexpected bellow. “What? Faris?” I mumbled.

“Oh, you are awake after all!” The door clicked shut. I heard another soft sound and vaguely recognized the sound of Jasper’s sword being resheathed.

“I guess?” I said, still disoriented and groggy. Everything ached. “Wh’time’s it?”

“It is just past noon! One of my men reported to me that two people wearing hoods were seen going to the inn a few hours ago, and I thought perhaps I should come to find you, since you had not come to see me.”

I rubbed at my eyes. “How’d you get in?” I rolled my head around to check if the window was open, having a muddled idea of Faris leaping in after learning some circus moves.

“You left the door unlocked for me,” he answered in a faintly questioning tone.

“Your Highness. Do you have word for us?” Jasper asked from the other side of the room.

“Yes! Dopple returned to me, and he has completed the quest!”

“Oh.” I pried myself off the floor and struggled to make my brain catch up to the new reality that I was awake now.

“And?” Jasper asked.

“I do not know what to say. He appears to have brought the very thing I asked for. I still do not think he liked me. Perhaps the good Sir Hendrik insisted, out of the knightly bonds of brotherhood, and Dopple decided to earn his trust by truly fulfilling my request.”

“Where’d they go?” I managed.

“I do not know. They simply handed over the branch and left, even while I had my mouth open to ask them for a second branch.”

“Can you tell us of their overall goals?” Jasper asked, his voice still raspy with sleep.

Faris shook his head. “They did not say more than they had to.”

Jasper’s tone adopted a faint hint of irritability, which I guessed wasn’t surprising, since he must have suffered through the same rude awakening as I had. “Can you offer us any other aid, besides the news that Dopple was here? Perhaps you might offer some soldiers for our cause.”

“Well, I have been thinking about that,” Faris said. “I am not allowed to reassign any of my men from the city, not at a time like this. Father has said many times that we must keep a strong presence here in case the monsters should go mad and charge the city. The people are afraid enough, without a great number of their defenders leaving.”

“I suppose we could not have expected aught else,” Jasper said.

“However! What the soldiers may not do, a lone hero still might.” Faris struck his chest with his fist. “Be of good heart, for I have made arrangements that I may accompany you myself!”

I gaped.

“Well! That is something,” Jasper said, in a tone of pleased surprise. “Are you certain you can leave the city without betraying our existence and our mission?”

Faris nodded, smiling. “All I must say is that I am going forth on a quest to vanquish the Dark Star. My father will keep it quiet enough for a time, if I ask for his discretion.”

“Is he going to bel—” I cut myself off, because I didn’t want to make Jasper question Faris’s worth before we even gave him a chance to demonstrate whether his knightly skills had improved at all from what I’d seen. I coughed and steered my question into a more polite, “To be okay with that?”

“It is traditional for princes to go on quests, is it not? And that is exactly what I shall do. I shall give you all the aid of a knight of Gallopolis!”

“It will be good to have the might of one of the famed desert knights at our side. Welcome aboard,” said Jasper, inclining his head and bringing a fist to his own chest, and earning a delighted grin from Faris.

“Yeah,” I said, trying to convince myself that this was going to be anything other than a disaster.

  


* * *

  


Since we were already awake, with a new member of our little party to work with, Jasper proposed that we go straight to practicing fighting as a slightly larger team, and I suggested the wild desert, figuring Faris might have more experience fighting in the local terrain. We teleported out and organized ourselves into a triangular formation, with Jasper front and center.

Jasper took out the first five monsters by himself, while I hung back to keep a worried eye on Faris, and Faris stumbled a little every time he tried to move forward.

“Your Highness, will you lead the next charge?” Jasper finally suggested.

“Of course!” Faris threw a bright smile in Jasper’s direction. Then he pointed his sword at a small cactus monster, and he set forwards towards it. But he trudged through the sand with an awkward stance that wasn’t doing him any favors, so he had no momentum when he touched the thing with his sword. The monster hopped straight up, nudging his sword out of the way and overbalancing him so that he fell backwards into the sand with a yelp.

I cast a fire spell to get the monster’s attention before Faris turned into a pincushion, and Jasper swept out his blade as the monster passed him by on its way to counterattack, cutting it neatly in half.

“Ah, heh. It is different, fighting on the sands, compared to the training grounds,” Faris said sheepishly.

“You have not had experience in the field?” Jasper asked.

“Oh, well. Some, certainly. There was the time when we fought the Slayer of the Sands together, eh?” Faris threw a pleading smile my way.

“Mm,” I said, and then I offered, “Um, do you want to go somewhere else? With more solid ground to stand on? For now?”

“Perhaps that would be wise,” Jasper said with a small frown.

  


* * *

  


I teleported us north of the inner sea, and once again, we stood in formation. At least while we stood still, Faris looked steadier on his feet.

“If you will take the lead again?” Jasper said.

“Right!” Faris perked up, turned in a circle, let out a yell, and started running away from us towards a large cluster of some kind of giant walking vegetable-looking creatures, all of them carrying spears.

“Faris, wait up!” I shouted, running after him.

“Die! Foul beasts!” he yelled, swinging his sword with both hands, hard enough that he spun himself around and ended up facing the wrong direction. 

“Faris!” I ran to try to help again, because the mobile vegetation was moving to surround him.

“Meet your doom!” Faris shouted as he took another wild swing that missed all his targets, barely missed me, and dug the tip of his sword into the dirt.

I cast a lightning spell ahead of me, trying to disable a chunk of the monster circle, and I saw Jasper’s dark magic carve through the opposite side of the group. I knew we were both using our strongest magic to try to get Faris out of danger as quickly as possible, even though we wouldn’t have done that if we were planning any more fights after this. I hadn’t rested nearly long enough to build all my magical energy back up after the past couple of days, and my muscles were practically yelling at me to get some rest, too.

The last monster standing ended up trying to back away from Jasper and me, and ran itself onto Faris’s sword.

“Ha ha!” Faris shouted triumphantly. “Victory! Eep!”

His cheer turned into a squeak as the impaled monster tried to stab him with its spear. I guess man-eating cucumbers with legs aren’t really all that bothered about phase one of becoming a shish-kabob. I stepped in to finish it off with my own sword.

“Okay,” I said. “Okay, the monsters out here are tougher than they look, huh?”

“But with the power of teamwork, we have proven ourselves triumphant!” Faris declared cheerfully.

“Right. We did.” I snuck a glance at Jasper. Jasper did not look cheerful. Jasper looked irritable going on dour. “So um, how about we hop back to the campsite and get some rest? It’s been a long couple of days for Jasper and me.” And just at the moment, I didn’t want to risk Faris running loose in a town while the other two of us were passed out.

  


* * *

  


“How should we split up tasks? Pitching the tents, getting some more firewood, cooking dinner?” I suggested.

“A reasonable division. I will gather firewood, as I am the most adept at protecting myself,” Jasper said. He turned and walked away from camp without looking at either of us.

“Okay. Um.” I looked at Faris hesitantly, suddenly wondering whether he was even capable of any of the options. “Are you okay with tents? Or cooking?”

“I shall cook!” he said, puffing out his chest and raising his chin.

“Okay. Here, I have a pot and the vegetables we brought.” I looked over to see a bit of wood for a campfire left behind by the last traveler, as campsite etiquette dictated, and I cast a spell to set it on fire. “Let me know if you need a hand.”

“Fear not! I will make a fine cooked vegetable.”

“Oh. I thought soup, but sure, if you got a recipe, go for it.”

“Soup! Right!”

I waited to see if he wanted to say anything else, but he just stood there beaming at me, so I turned to deal with the tents.

I still only kind of had the hang of pitching a tent, since I’d usually shared with the guys and someone else usually did the task, so I got pretty absorbed in the job after a few minutes, trying to perfect it as best I could. For once, I thought, I’d do something I wasn’t totally familiar with, and do it well enough that even Jasper couldn’t complain.

A little while later, I stood back and admired my three symmetrically pitched tents, right as Jasper came back with a sword in one hand and a large bundle of wood in the other arm. “This should see us through the evening, with some left over. How is the...”

We both turned at the sound of a noisy splash to see Faris standing next to the fire. The pot was on the ground, surrounded by a puddle, and he held his sword over it. As we watched, he used his sword to spear a blackened lump out of the fire and awkwardly maneuver it back over the pot. It slid off his sword and bounced off of the rim of the pot; a small blackened chunk fell on the ground, but most of the lump landed in the pot with a second, smaller splash.

“Hey, Faris? Um. How’s the soup going?” I called.

“Well, it is…” He fell silent as I approached, looking anxious. Then he flung himself on the ground at my feet, sword and all. I yanked a leg out of the way to keep my pants safe from the blade.

“Forgive me!” he wailed. “I have never made a soup before! I believed it would be easy, but I do not think it is working at all!”

“Okay, okay, it’s all right, just let me see. So, you...um, you were pre-cooking the vegetables in the fire, I guess?”

He raised his head, then pushed himself up onto his knees. “Yes. How else would you do it?”

He reached out to drag the pot closer with his bare hands, and I let out a shout of dismay. “Faris! Don’t...Wait. The pot’s not hot?”

“No? The water is cool.”

“But...Okay.” I sat on my heels and rubbed my forehead. “The way I usually make soup is by heating the water in the pot and cooking the vegetables in that, right?”

“Oh! Oh, I see!”

I glanced up at Jasper, who was staring at us with no expression at all, which I didn’t think was a great sign.

“Well, are there any vegetables left?” I asked, forcibly optimistic.

Faris looked into the fire.

“Okay,” I said, “Well, let’s, uh, fish them out, and we can see if any of them aren’t totally charred through. We can cut the good parts out and get some fresh water and see what we can make.”

  


* * *

  


The new soup wasn’t much. We broke out the emergency jerky I had packed away, a habit I’d gotten from Erik, who refused to risk anyone going hungry at any time. We weren’t quite full when we went to bed, but I don’t think any of us were suffering. Well, I couldn’t speak for Faris, but he had kind of a hangdog look about him, so I didn’t think he wanted anyone to pay more attention.

I’d just started to drift off to sleep, alone in my little tent, when I heard the sound of screaming. I lurched up out of the grasp of sleep for the third time that day, drawing my sword as I crawled out of my tent.

One of the tents was on fire. I saw Faris scrambling backwards out of it.

“Are you all right?” I exclaimed, casting a healing spell for him just in case, and I turned to look for some fire-breathing monster, or maybe Dopple, ambushing us this close to a Goddess statue.

“I-I am all right,” Faris said.

“What caused this?” Jasper demanded, pacing the perimeter of our camp.

Faris mumbled something.

“What was that? Did you see something?” Jasper asked him.

“My torch,” Faris mumbled a little louder.

“Your torch?” Jasper asked.

Faris’s tent collapsed on itself. The flames shot a little higher.

Faris nodded mournfully.

“You. Took a torch. Inside your tent.” Jasper’s tone made me wince, and I wasn’t even the target.

“I do not like to sleep alone in the dark,” Faris moaned.

I stared, then shook my head, grabbed the empty pot from dinner, and ran to fetch some water.

  


* * *

  


We only lost the one tent, in the end. Jasper pulled up my tent while I was dousing the flames and moved it to a safer distance. Then he went back into his own tent without further comment.

“I am sorry, El,” Faris mumbled in my ear. I’d crawled into my own tent, and Faris crammed himself in next to me. I was way too tired to have an opinion about that. “This is all my fault. I thought I was ready for this. But I know nothing.”

“It’s okay,” I mumbled back, barely awake enough to use words, as I drifted off into my fourth attempt at sleep since the long day of swamp fighting yesterday. “It’ll be okay.”

  


* * *

  


In the morning, I found Faris next to a pile of wood.

“Good morning,” he said in a subdued voice. “I thought I should try to find something else to eat. I know some cacti are edible if you cut off the spines, but I am not sure about the plants around here? I thought I should wait for your advice.” He held up a chunk of wood for my inspection.

“Um, we don’t really eat trees, actually,” I said, slightly amazed at the words coming out of my mouth, even after everything that had happened the day before. “But we could use it as more fuel for the fire?”

“Eleven. May I speak with you privately?” Jasper said from behind me.

“Oh, sure. Um, Faris, you want to…” I cast about for a task at which he might find some success. “Fetch some water? I’ll hop to a town in a minute and get some grain for porridge, okay?”

He looked up and gave me a serious nod. “Very well.”

I gave him an encouraging smile. His shoulders straightened, and he lifted his chin as he turned to pick up the pot.

I turned to go meet Jasper, who stood a little distance away, watching Faris from the corner of his eye.

“So. This is the prince of Gallopolis?” he said in a low voice.

“Yep. That’s Prince Faris all right,” I answered.

“The boy is worse than useless.” I suddenly realized how much venom Jasper had stopped using on me, because he brought it back full force now to speak of Faris. “He is a danger to himself and others. That is the person that is to be given rulership of the entire desert kingdom? Better for his people if we should allow him to be lost!”

I stared at Jasper, and then I glanced back at Faris to see him slipping a little on the rocks of the river. He managed to regain his footing and begin carrying the water back to the remains of last night’s fire, and he cast a small, slightly unhappy smile in our direction before he sat to begin stacking wood for a new fire.

I thought about how hard it had been for me to try and adapt to life on the road. How many times had Erik told me I’d almost had my pocket picked, after he blocked the would-be thief? Serena had taught me to mend small tears in my clothing, because Mum or Gemma always used to do it for me and I'd never learned. Veronica stopped me from throwing a poisonous look-alike leaf in to season our dinner, once, and Sylv had taught me how to talk to merchants so they not only stopped trying to fleece the naive country boy, but would give me a discount for being charming.

Even Jasper had already helped me a lot. If not for him, I probably would have barged into Heliodor and gotten my butt kicked by Mordegon or Dopple, whoever saw me first. We hadn’t accomplished a ton together so far, but we had successfully stayed out of sight of our enemies, and I’d honestly been learning a lot about patience and prudence.

If I was any good at anything, it was because I’d had friends to help me get there, and it was clear that Faris was trying, too. He wanted to be here.

The pile of wood he was building toppled over. His shoulders slumped. But then he took a deep breath and started over.

Jasper added, “We could just go. Leave him here. On the off chance that he lives to make his way home, perhaps he will have learned something.”

And suddenly, I was the angry one. I spun and jabbed a finger into Jasper’s chest, to his visible astonishment.

“Stop it! I don’t want to hear it. You think he’s a terrible choice of leader? You think you’re so much better than him? If you were gonna be a king, you can’t just kill off the people you don’t think are as good as you. He may not know a lot, but he worships the ground you walk on, Jasper. Did you see the way he lit up when you welcomed him on board yesterday? Every time you asked him to do something? You have a prince who is ready to do anything you tell him to do. If you really can’t do anything with that, then I don’t think you’re as great a leader as you think you are.”

Jasper stared at me in silence. I crossed my arms and stared back.

Then he spun on his heel and stalked away.

I watched Jasper go, wondering if I’d just driven away my strongest ally for the sake of the least capable. But I was mad enough I didn’t entirely care. 

Faris stood up as I walked back over to him. “What is Sir Jasper up to?”

“He’s...scouting,” I fibbed. “Want to come with me to the market real quick? We’ll just get some supplies and pop right back.”

“All right,” Faris said. I gave him a tight smile and put a hand on his shoulder for the teleportation spell, and I saw him cheer up a little as the magic picked us up.

  


* * *

  


By the time we finished making the porridge, Faris had perked up enough to start chattering about different foods he enjoyed. I listened with half an ear, and in the meantime, I struggled to think of any plan of action for a future that involved me and Faris, and no Jasper.

“Well, Jasper will want us to do some training,” I said after we finished eating. “Um...Let’s work with sticks instead of real swords for a bit.”

I started going through a basic warm-up drill with him, something I’d learned from Grandpa Chalky and adjusted with feedback from Sylv, and it seemed like Faris actually was familiar with the process. With just the two of us, on flat ground, under the eye of a Goddess statue, Faris’s swordsmanship wasn’t completely awful. Not flawless, but not awful.

“You know, you’re not half bad at this,” I said. “You must have been practicing.”

Faris gave me a surprised look, and then a serious nod. “Every day, since the Slayer of the Sands. I...Listen, I know I am not as good as your Sylvando, or Sir Jasper, or maybe anyone you know. But I want to be. I want to be a good knight.”

I gave him a startled look right back over the sudden honesty, and then I smiled. “Right. Well, you’re on the right track. Just, maybe keep it simple if we get in another fight, okay? These drills are good moves for a real fight, too, especially if you haven’t fought a lot of monsters before, and you’ll get into trouble trying to do fancy moves like yesterday.”

Faris sighed. “I really wanted to do something to impress you. And Sir Jasper. Do you think he still thinks well of me? After yesterday?”

“Um...Well.” I tugged at my sleeve and searched for a positive spin. “Jasper’s pretty hard to impress. I’m not sure I’ve even ever impressed him. I wouldn’t worry about that too much. Let’s just worry about the future. Let’s keep things simple, and if you’re ever not sure about how to do something, just ask for help, okay?”

“Okay.” Faris gave me a small smile, and we faced off and went back to our drills.

  


* * *

  


I was feeling warm with the exercise and the morning sun by the time I heard, “Turn your body more to the side. No need to make yourself a bigger target than you must be.”

I quietly let out a deep sigh of relief at the sound of Jasper’s voice behind me.

Faris glanced up and then sent his easy smile somewhere over my shoulder. “Yes, sir!”

“You too, Eleven. You might as well practice the posture properly for one-handed fighting without a shield.”

“Right,” I said. “How’s this?”

“Better. Continue.”

As Jasper coached us through a slightly more complicated version of our drills, he wasn’t exactly overflowing with praise. But he didn’t insult us, either, just stated matter-of-factly where we were flawed, and offered corrections.

Over the morning, I saw Faris’s good cheer restored. I didn’t know if he would remember everything Jasper was making him do, but he was a little steadier on his feet, at least, and when he scored on me in slow motion with his stick, and he shouted, “Ha ha!” I thought it was nice just having someone cheerful in the group for a change.

And I felt my own spirits rise. I'd challenged Jasper and hadn't lost a friend over it, and I was maybe on my way to having a whole team of friends around me again. Even if Faris wasn't going to be a huge help in a fight right now, just having more than one person willing to fight at my side made me feel like everything was more possible than yesterday.

By the time we stopped for lunch, and I set to work teaching Faris how to make his own sandwich, I dared to hope I’d made a good life choice in letting him join us and bullying Jasper into giving him a chance.


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Content warning: we’re about to have some plot just in this chapter that ties into the story of a certain NPC’s self-destructive (suicidal) choices as per canon. In case you want to avoid reading about that, I’ll put a tl;dr summary at the very end of this chapter’s end notes to summarize the big picture implications of this chapter overall, and you can skip it without suffering for overall plot comprehension.
> 
> Lesser content warning: uh...vaguely implied impolite bodily humor. Again. (Listen, Toilet Guy has changed my life...)

“I hope I will not hold you back, friends. I expect I will need a full week of training before I begin to approach your level,” Faris said seriously, as we finished our post-training-session lunch.

I traded a glance with Jasper, who gave me an indecipherable look. At least, I chose to pretend it was indecipherable.

I shrugged and diplomatically said, “Even if all of us here were as good as Jasper, we’d still be looking at a pretty tough fight. Especially since we don’t really want to seriously hurt Dopple’s allies. My other friends. And even for things like that Gondolia incident, we just don’t have enough people to take on a big fight.”

Jasper nodded. “It would be wise to increase the size of our forces. You are certain we cannot draw on the aid of the military forces of Gallopolis?”

“No. That was the first point my father raised when I spoke of leaving. We cannot leave Gallopolis undefended at a time like this.” Faris tapped a finger against his mouth in thought. “We could try the kingdom of Sniflheim?”

“Sniflheim would also be a challenge, if I am to be involved with the borrowed forces,” Jasper admitted.

I thought about the whole freezing-the-city business and nodded.

“And you say that King Carnelian is our enemy. So then we cannot look to any of the great kingdoms in the world for aid,” Faris said.

“Well, there’s the mermaid kingdom,” I said.

“Did you say ‘the mermaid kingdom?’” Faris asked with wide eyes.

Jasper frowned at me. “Would your mythical sea kingdom truly be able to offer any aid?”

“Maybe. Probably! Queen Marina has some way to see everything that happens on land. She knew who I was the first time she met me. She helped us figure out where to go to collect the orbs. Even if she can’t give us any fighters, I bet she could tell us what Dopple’s up to, or where’s a good place to go look for help.”

* * *

I Zoomed us down to the place where we’d docked Sylv’s ship underwater before, counting on the mermaid who kept watch there being able to help us. And she was, and she did.

“Thank you! Okay, we can breathe underwater now,” I said once she finished the spell, and I let go of Jasper’s and Faris’s hands.

Or I tried. Faris hung on with a deathgrip. “Are you sure?” he asked, losing most of his remaining air in a stream of bubbles. He clapped his free hand over his mouth and gave me a wild-eyed look.

Jasper pointed his face upward and expelled all his air, and he pulled in a deep breath of the water, as though to prove his own courage in contrast.

“Good,” I said to Jasper, and then to Faris, “Like I said, it’s easier if you get all the air out first, and then the spell makes it so you don’t really feel like the water’s any different to breathe than air.”

Faris nodded, squared his shoulders, let go of my hand, and breathed in instead of out, which meant he suffered through a coughing fit while the magic sorted out the mix of air and water. I gave him a sympathetic clap on the back, in the slow-motion way of underwater gestures.

It didn’t take long before he straightened up, and his expression changed from panic to astonishment. “It worked! I am alive! And under the sea! And you are a mermaid! Hello, Lady Mermaid!”

The mermaid guard grinned and gave Faris a wave before he turned and started exploring. He bounced a few steps down the path in great leaping strides, the same way Sylv and I had done the first time we visited. I smiled and followed along.

Faris stopped to run his fingers over a frond of seaweed, and Jasper’s voice came from behind us. “Do not damage the plants. It would be poor manners to mar the landscaping on our first visit to a new kingdom.”

“I was not going to!” Faris protested, pulling his hand away.

I shook my head and started forward again. “Wait until you see the buildings.”

Faris made an appreciative tourist, oohing and ahhing over everything in sight as we entered the proper town, and when I snuck a glance at Jasper, I thought even he looked at least interested, maybe even a bit impressed.

I took a minute to enjoy their enjoyment. It hadn’t occurred to me that this would be one nice thing about running with a new crowd: I got to be the experienced traveler in the group for once, and I had one or two amazing things to share with the newcomers.

* * *

At Jasper’s request, I let him take the lead in explaining the situation. I only half-listened for a minute, because Queen Marina looked less happy to see us than I expected, and I was busy trying to guess whether she’d already been fooled by Dopple. I was a teensy bit worried I would need to grab my little team and Zoom away.

Then I registered that Jasper was giving his entire explanation in rhyme, and I turned to stare at him. Apparently he was really serious about the epic poetry thing.

“A doppleganger somehow wears a copy of his face. He found Eleven’s friends, then fooled them all and took his place,” Jasper was saying. “Since then, he took the Sword of Light and called a flying whale. We know not what his next plans are, but hope to make them fail.”

Marina slowly pulled her gaze away from Jasper and stared impassively at me. “Let me get this straight. There is another one of you? And I’m supposed to think that you’re the better of the two.”

I hugged myself, unhappy to be challenged for the first time by someone who used to be an unquestioning ally. “Yes? Please. I don’t know what to do to prove it. I have the mark. But I guess he has a copy of that, too. Ugh. But he’s going around doing things and we can’t even figure out what, but right after he took my place, the Dark Star appeared, and he’s definitely in cahoots with Mordegon, but we don’t know any more detail about where he is or what he’s trying to do.”

I came to the end of my little disorganized rant and fell silent, feeling like a deeply unimpressive excuse for a hero. Marina eyed me in silence a minute longer. I tugged at my sleeves and squirmed a little. Faris put a comforting hand on my shoulder and squeezed.

Finally, Marina said, “Tradition says that when in doubt it’s fair to give a test. Perhaps what I should ask you is to undertake a quest.”

“I can do quests!” I said, a little desperately. “What do you want me to do?”

She turned her stare towards Jasper again and said, “I see that you have saved a ruthless villain’s soul from hell. I wonder if you next might save an innocent as well.”

“Jasper’s not that bad,” I protested. Then I thought it might be safer not to dwell on that subject. “Anyway, I’m happy to try to help someone else. But Zing doesn’t work every time.”

“And so it won’t in this case either, though I wish it would. The Mermaid’s Curse is stubborn. No known cures are any good.”

I sucked in a sharp breath. “Michelle. You want me to bring back Michelle?”

Marina bowed her head. “I know I made it seem as though I’d come to terms back then. It was a lie. I long to see my niece alive again.”

“Your niece.” I squeezed my arms a little tighter around myself and studied the floor, all my guilt from that day coming back twice as heavy now that I knew Marina’s personal connection. “I probably wouldn’t have told her the truth if I knew what was going to happen. But I don’t know how I can help, now.”

“The curse is something that I’ve studied for three centuries. I ask one lone experiment to put my heart at ease.”

“Okay. What should we do?

“The first thing that you’ll need to do is make a solid form: a simulacrum close enough in substance to her norm.”

Marina’s proposed experiment only got more complicated from there, and I couldn’t follow it at all. I just had the vague impression that it was an extremely technical description of magic, something about resonance and repositories and words I’d never heard before. I tried my best, but all I could pick out of the conversation were the rhymes: time, prime. Scale, tail. Reckless, necklace.

I started to panic a little as the information kept coming, until Jasper interjected with a question, and I realized Marina wasn’t even looking at me anymore. Jasper was listening intently to everything she said, nodding along.

I looked over at Faris. He wasn’t even standing with us anymore; he’d gone off to talk to one of the mermaid guards, who was whispering something back to him with a small smile.

“That sounds promising, as I understand it,” Jasper was saying. He and Marina both looked over at me expectantly.

“Umm. I’m sorry, I didn’t really understand anything,” I confessed.

“Not to worry,” Jasper said. “I can take care of most of it. The only thing we specifically need you for is to try to combine your luminary powers with a Zing spell, when everything else is assembled.”

“Oh.” I rubbed the mark on my hand. “I can try. But where...It’s not like there’s a, a body,” I mumbled.

Jasper gave a small sigh and a nod, and then he launched into a matter-of-fact summary like he hadn’t expected any better comprehension from me. “As Her Majesty said, that is why we will need to create a simulacrum first. A body, essentially. Given enough components that were relevant to this mermaid’s being, we can transform them into a new body for her, and from there, it will not be unlike an ordinary Zing. Her Majesty will give us a few strands of hair, an old garment, and a loose scale to use in the construct, and we will go hunt down one of the pearls our target wore to her final moments.”

I followed most of that, and then Marina nodded and spoke more slowly, like she was speaking to a child. “Because she lived the same life day to day for fifty years, the pearl she wore may hold the echo of her hopes and fears.”

“This wouldn’t work with most humans.” If Jasper was bothering to volunteer extra information for my benefit, I guessed he must be in a great mood over all the magic geek talk. “We are too changeable. But it sounds like this Michelle hardly changed at all for decades. So there’s a good chance her spirit might be lingering where she was living, and if we bring enough bits and pieces that match the pattern of her, we can incorporate everything together and get her back.”

“Mind, if it works, she won’t recall the things that happened since. Don’t tell her, please. There’s hope for her in blissful ignorance,” Marina warned.

I fidgeted with my sleeve and looked at the floor. “Is that really that much of a life? We told her in the first place because it seemed like she was just going to wait there forever, and that seemed pretty sad to us, too.”

“I’ve hoped for years, and I still do, that even though Kai’s gone, perhaps someday some fair new friend will lure her to move on. She’s...focused, but if something else could catch her interest, then when she learns Kai’s gone she might not choose eternal rest,” Marina said.

“Right. Okay. I could see that. I think.” I glanced to Faris, instinctively feeling like he was better feedback for a question of morality than Jasper. He gave me a cheerful smile. I wasn’t sure he actually had much understanding of what was going on.

Jasper took a step forward. “Your Majesty. May I speak in a more casual manner? I must admit that I doubt my ability to maintain proper conversation while I am keeping to iambic heptameter.”

Marina inclined her head in a nod and gestured agreement, but didn’t answer aloud. Maybe there was some commentary even mermaids didn’t want to bother rhyming over.

“Then I also must beg your pardon for making such a crass inquiry, but what should we expect as a reward for doing this task?”

Marina gave us a tiny smile. “Until I fully grasp the secret nature of your double, I will not try to harm him, lest I leave the world in trouble. But if you do this task for me, I’ll help you find a clue. One time only, while I scry, I'll let you see him too.”

Jasper glanced at me. I shrugged and tried an optimistic smile. He nodded and turned back to Marina.

“I believe I can perform all of the other magic as you have specified, save for one thing. I have never successfully completed a transformation of a living being, which I believe will be necessary knowledge. My mas...my _mentor_ was still withholding a proper demonstration, and I have not been capable of reproducing the effect from my texts alone.”

“So you need me to demonstrate for you the way it’s done?” Marina said to Jasper, then nodded and graced me with a benevolent smile for the first time this whole visit. “It’s simpler down here anyway to swim instead of run.”

She gestured, and I barely realized what was happening before my arms and legs started feeling extremely strange and everything got a little bigger and Faris shouted, “El! You’re a fish!”

“I’m a what?” I tried to say, only my voice wasn’t working, and I instinctively wiggled my new fins and ended up listing to one side. I heard the mermaid guards on the other side of the room giggle.

“Ahh. There is less preparation than I imagined,” Jasper said. “Would you be able to repeat that once more, but perhaps a bit more slowly?”

I tried to give him a betrayed look, but couldn’t quite figure out how to point myself in the right direction before I had arms and legs again. I wasted a few seconds flailing to try and catch my balance. I caught a glimpse of Jasper holding up his weird glowy circle-window of magic inspection that he’d tried to use on the Dark Star.

I just barely had time to realize what it meant that he was still watching me through it before another transformation spell took effect, but this time it was a lot slower, and really, really itchy.

“Hey, at least you could ask—” was all I had time to say before I lost the power of speech again, and I resigned myself to being some kind of arcane lab rabbit.

“Ah, Sir Jasper,” Faris said, “Could you warn me if you have to do it that slowly? I do not think that I would like to watch that again.”

“No, no need,” Jasper said, and though I was a disoriented and cranky fish, I could hear the startling enthusiasm in his voice. “I have identified the missing piece! Let me just…”

I felt a disturbance in the water, and enough instinct kicked in this time to let me swim in a tiny half-circle so I could turn and look.

There was a new fish in the room, a round one with golden scales that faded to translucent white at the tips of the fins. A goldfish, I realized, remembering Erik’s explanation of a display in a Heliodor shop window as he dragged me away from the bizarre display of a live fish for sale.

This goldfish, larger than the would-be pet I’d seen before, was staring with an open-mouthed expression of shock and awe. For a second, I thought I was being silly to project emotions onto a fish face, but then I realized he was silently talking with his posture and I was somehow understanding.

<What happened? Am I a fish? I am a fish!> the goldfish said.

<You are a fish. I can understand you? Faris?> I felt myself moving as the thoughts crossed my mind.

<You recognized me! I can understand you! This is amazing!> said Fish Faris.

There was another disturbance in the water, and I reflexively turned around again to see a third fish.

This one was much flashier than even Faris's gold: a slender, lavender body, with dark, oversized ruffled fins trailing loosely behind him. The fins differed in color the further they went from the body: from purple to red, back to purple, with a fringe of white at the edges.

<Jasper?> I thought, and I felt my body moving. <That’s really pretty. Wait, did I say that out loud? Well, not out loud. I mean...>

Jasper looked momentarily startled, then pleased. Somehow. In fish expressions. <It worked. That was much easier than I imagined. Not easy, of course. But easier.> Now he looked smug.

I heard one of the guards say, “I think the luminary makes the most appealing fish. I’d like to grab ahold of him and make his cheeks go squish.”

I spotted Jasper’s fins twitch in irritation, but I was already turning to look at the mermaid. She saw me looking, winked, and beckoned.

<Oh, umm, sorry, I’m in love with someone else. I mean. In like. I don’t know yet. It’s complicated. I’m babbling. I’m babbling for everyone to see, aren’t I? How do I stop?>

The guard laughed, beckoned again, and tapped a mirror she was holding in her other hand.

<Oh.> I felt silly, and I probably was showing that feeling to everyone in the room, too, but I was curious enough to know what I looked like, so I swam over to look in the mirror.

I was pretty sure I was the weirdest looking fish out of the lot of us, by far. My purple wasn’t too far off from Jasper’s coloring, but I felt mundane in comparison. My Luminary’s mark was on my stomach. Did that mean my hands were part of my stomach now? Were my fins made out of my ears or something?

The mermaids were laughing again. Of course. I couldn’t seem to stop projecting everything I was thinking.

Faris swam up next to me to check himself out, clearly awed and delighted by his own reflection, and then Jasper came up and looked as well.

As soon as he made eye contact with himself in the mirror, Jasper’s fins shot out in a wide, round arc of color, and a little ridge around his face stood out from his body, too. He looked three times larger and fancier. And, with some new inborn fishy knowledge, I read the posture as an expression of pure, instinctive rage.

He darted closer to the mirror and turned sideways, like a man in a tavern answering an insult by charging over with a raised fist to glower and menace the offender. Then an instant later, he said, <My reflection. Of course. How embarrassing. Perhaps I can spin this as, what? Demonstrating the range of my new form. It is hardly a displeasing aesthetic effect.> The visible embarrassment shifted into admiration as he studied himself.

I doubted he knew he was conveying his inner thoughts so openly. I swam to the other side of Faris in an attempt to hide my awareness, because I sure didn’t know how to keep my thoughts to myself either like this.

I guessed Jasper caught a glimpse anyway, because he froze, and then he was suddenly a human again, and then so were Faris and I. Jasper smoothed his bangs to the side and said, “Well. That is a simple enough matter, then. I suppose we may as well get on with it. If Your Majesty will provide the materials you wish to commit to the mission?”

* * *

A Zoom and a walk later, we waded into the water behind Lonalulu. Jasper looked unusually cheerful, I guess happy over the chance to use his new transformation powers again, and Faris laughed as he splashed his way into the waves.

I hugged my arms around myself. Trying not to think about the cemetery a few paces away. Trying not to think about how we were following in Michelle’s footsteps.

But we didn’t dissolve in the water, just turned into our fish-selves when Jasper’s magic took hold.

<Now we have only to find the pearl,> Jasper signalled.

I tried to nod, human-style, and just mashed my face into the sand. Then I tried to wipe my face with my fins, but they were too short. I sighed out a little stream of bubbles.

<Do you think it is buried? Buried treasure?> Faris said, watching me, and without waiting for an answer, he mashed his face into the sand too.

Jasper rolled his eyes behind Faris’s back and swam away from us.

* * *

Of course it wasn’t as easy as looking in the exact spot I’d last seen Michelle. The sand visibly shifted with the waves, and no treasure was waiting right there in the shallows, so we swam a little further out.

Faris stuck close to me, and I didn’t mind the company. Maybe it was a fish thing, but I felt a lot better not being all alone in the great big ocean as we hunted for the lost pearl.

So I was the one who saw when Faris wedged his face next to a big rock on the sea floor and started wiggling his fins in excitement.

It wasn’t the first time he’d done this, so I tried not to get my hopes up too far. But then he popped out of the sand and there in his mouth was a round, white shape.

<I found it I found it!> he said.

<Really? That’s amazing!> I answered. <Do you need help? You got it?>

<I got it.> He adjusted his mouth, closing his lips around the pearl. Then his posture changed to faint alarm.

<What’s wrong?> I wiggled.

<Nothing?>

It seemed like it was even harder to lie in fish form, because somehow his posture radiated panicked dishonesty.

<Did you just eat the pearl?>

His fins drooped. <Yes?>

I stared at him for a minute, and he looked more and more dejected, until I shook myself and said, <Okay, look, that’s okay. That’s not a big problem. Let’s just find Jasper.>

Jasper was not impressed with the news. His fins flared out and scorn dripped from his posture. <You swallowed the pearl.>

I swished my tail to put myself in between Faris and Jasper. <He swallowed the pearl. It’s okay. We’ll get it back later. But can you transform him back to human without losing the pearl?>

The scorn melted in favor of a more thoughtful expression. <Yes, I believe that should be doable.> Apparently a weird magic problem was enough to distract Jasper from his less polite feelings. I moved out of the way so Faris could see that Jasper’s bad mood wasn’t lasting.

* * *

Jasper went on some errands in town after that.

Meanwhile, Faris and I…

Faris and I made a vow never, ever, to talk about what happened over the next day.

Anyway, by the time I finally teleported us out to The Strand, we had an impeccably clean pearl in our hands. Mum herself couldn’t have complained about how thoroughly clean it was.

We assembled our offerings. Under Jasper’s orders, we laid out some seaweed and driftwood in a vaguely humanoid...mermanoid? shape, and covered the pile with moist sand. Faris got pretty enthusiastic about sculpting the sand, tracing little scales onto the tail. “They used to take me out to the oasis to do this! I usually do it in the sandbox in the garden these days, though, because then the guards don’t all have to come with me,” he said.

Faris and I both got kind of embarrassed when we realized we hadn’t added any detail to the torso, and we stalled until Jasper impatiently said, “There is no need to make it an exact replica. Just put the garment on, and the spell will take care of the rest.”

Somehow it became my job to arrange Michelle’s, um, garment, over the top of her sand-self, while Jasper and Faris both found really urgent tasks to deal with on the edges of the island. I hastily dropped the top into place and half-heartedly tried to tuck the straps over her not-shoulders and not-back. After sitting in indecision for a full minute, I dug down through the sand and driftwood of the mock-shoulders and then reformed them inside the loops of cloth, so at least the shoulder straps would be actually around the shoulders. I didn’t think I could handle dealing with that after Jasper transformed all this into a real body.

The arrangement came out a little lopsided, but when Jasper returned, he just handed over the other materials without comment. Faris carefully uncurled and laid out the pink strands of hair to frame her face, and he embedded the scale at the base of her tail, and I gently settled the pearl just below her neck.

“Is that it?” I said.

“That should be sufficient,” Jasper said.

He stared down in silence for a long moment, and I started to wonder if he was having second thoughts, but then he made a series of gestures with a finger, like he was tracing out runes, the same way Veronica sometimes did the first time she learned some extra complicated new arcane magic from a book. Then he held out his hands palms-down above the sculpture, let his eyes nearly close, and he let out a long, slow breath as he concentrated. Our sand mermaid slowly started to glow as I watched, and Jasper traced a finger in the air with one hand again, leaving purple runes in the air this time. Then I blinked, and then it was Michelle on the ground.

She was perfectly formed, her hair and her face and everything about her looking just as I remembered, save that she was lying down, and not going on and on about Kai. Her clothing and jewelry were precisely in place, including a complete pearl necklace and other jewelry we hadn’t brought with us.

“Oh! She’s so pretty,” Faris said.

“Well?” said Jasper, and he turned to me expectantly.

“That’s her, all right,” I said.

“Good. Then, if you would?” Jasper swept a hand toward the still figure and took a step back.

Right. My turn.

I tried to simultaneously think about Zing and also calm my nerves, and then I remembered I had to use my luminary power for this and that sometimes worked better when I was nervous, so I tried to focus on the fact that everybody was looking at me and Michelle was waiting and it was my fault she was in this situation in the first place.

That didn’t work. All I felt was anxious and embarrassed and guilty.

Then Faris clapped a hand on my shoulder. “I believe in you, El, my friend,” he said, and somehow that was enough. My hand started to tingle, and my magic built up and flew away like it knew what the world needed and I was just there to hold the door open.

Michelle opened her eyes.

“Kai?” she said.

“Sorry, no,” I said, but I couldn’t help smiling. I went weak with relief, too, so much that I sat down in the sand next to her. “Just, um, friends. Marina sent us to, uh, check up on you.”

Michelle sat up and gave me a smile, rolling her eyes. “Marina is a worrywart. It’s nice to hear her care, but she needs to respect my choice and let me breathe the air.”

“I think she’s okay with your choice. She just worries when you...haven’t been around for a while. Sometimes just scrying isn’t enough.”

Michelle rolled her eyes again. “My Kai’s away, and while I wait, sometimes I take a snooze. It might look like I’m dead. I’m not,” she said with a small smirk. Then she held up a hand and gave me a gentler smile. “I’ll tell her when there’s news.”

I sucked in a sharp breath, half wanting to yell at her for joking about that. But I remembered Marina’s warning, that Michelle wouldn’t likely remember anything besides the pattern she’d worn into the pearl over so many years. I absolutely, definitely didn’t want to be responsible for her dissolving a second time.

So I stood up and backed away with a shaky smile, and I managed a cheery, “Great, thanks, that’s all we needed! See you around, then!” I grabbed Jasper and Faris, ignored their startled looks, and teleported us back to Nautica.

* * *

When Faris asked, “Will you make us fish again, Sir Jasper?” Jasper waved a hand and turned only Faris into a fish. The goldfish-prince led the way back toward the palace, with frequent quick detours to inspect the scenery up close. Even though I couldn’t read his fish-expressions the way I could when I was a fish myself, I could tell he was in a good mood.

I was just as glad I had a few more minutes as not-a-fish. I needed some time before I made my emotions any more obvious for casual observers. Particularly since I hadn’t figured out what my emotions were, myself.

Evidently, Marina already knew our quest had succeeded. “The world’s a better place with our Michelle to sing her song.” She was smiling, though I thought she still looked a little bit sad. I guessed I could empathize. A moment later, she added, “The task is done. I gave my word. Why don’t you come along?”

With that, she used her arms to push herself upward from her throne, and she shot away with a flick of her tail, rushing off towards a passageway above us. She paused at the entrance and looked over her shoulder at us.

I reflexively tried to jump towards her, but my gear weighed me down, and I remembered I didn’t have to try to swim like a human. “Jasper? Could you…?”

He nodded and turned the remaining two of us humans into fish without even making a pithy comment about it, and we all hurried after the queen. With a new immediate goal in mind, I was distracted enough that I maybe didn’t even put on a show about my confusing emotions.

* * *

We gathered around a crystal ball in Marina’s room. Shapes began to form inside the orb, and I just had time to recognize what I was looking at as a really detailed map of the Sniflheim part of the world, before the point of view zoomed downwards and I realized it wasn’t a map so much as a bird’s eye view of the world itself.

I spotted the city of Sniflheim distinguishing itself on the not-map before it slipped out of view. <The Viking cave?> I narrated as the land grew closer. I remembered traveling there, back when I was feeling nervous about heading to Arboria, and my friends decided to humor me when I said we should go look into a problem with Frysabel’s luxury foods supply chain instead of going straight toward my destiny.

Being a fish was kind of cool and all, and nothing against Jasper and Faris, but I still kind of wished I’d found more excuses to delay.

But the image was still moving, and there was no time to sulk, as Mum would say. I flapped my fins for a better angle as the ground came closer and closer and we got to look at a little shack in the snow, and then the angle of view dropped so we could see the front door.

There was Dopple, leading the way out, looking disgustingly smug. Erik followed right after him, with the strangest expression I’d ever seen on him: beaming, but in a way that looked like he might also burst into tears.

A smaller figure appeared in the doorway but didn’t come outside. She leaned against the doorframe, far enough into the light that I could see it was a girl. A tween.

A tween who could have been Erik’s sister.

My mouth fell open. A stray fleck of seaweed washed in.

<Erik has a sister?!> I flailed hard enough with my fins that I drifted forward and bumped my mouth into the crystal ball. The image, which had been showing my friends gathering together for a teleportation spell, flickered and faded. I left the seaweed fleck smudged onto the glass.

<A sister? Fortunate fellow.> Faris radiated mild jealousy.

<A sister, and your impostor knows where she is.> Jasper was awfully calm, given the sinister nature of his words. <Giving him quite the leverage if he ever needs to blackmail your Erik or anyone who cares about him.>

There didn’t seem to be a still posture for how alarmed I was at that, and I found myself swimming in an agitated circle. <That’s not good!>

<No. Perhaps we should look into relocating her somewhere safe,> Jasper said.

<Yeah. Yeah. Okay. I can get us to the Viking cave. Let’s go!>

Look, maybe I was too full of nervous energy after Michelle. Or maybe it’s just easy to get overexcited as a fish. I don’t know. But I plowed into Fish-Faris and shoved him into Fish-Jasper, and I cast Zoom right away with no more of a plan than that.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Phew! Pro-tip: choosing to write plot-advancing formal mermaid dialogue in your longfic may challenge your secret dreams of maintaining a weekly update schedule. (On the upside, my respect for the DQXI localization team always skyrockets after I try it.)
> 
> This chapter touches on a couple of specific concepts I’ve seen contemplated before in other fic, so I want to give a shout out to those other works.
> 
> The concept of Act 3 Michelle, and the accompanying plothole depending on your act 1 choice, gets mentioned in both [Masquerade](https://archiveofourown.org/works/19862653) by SecretlyACatLady (an excellent fic for some Act 3 angst) and [Light through the Leaves](https://archiveofourown.org/works/19848811) by NedrynWrites (a fantastic choice for some Act 3 luminerik fluff).
> 
> Also, I _think_ I arrived at the idea of a pearl carrying something of Michelle’s essence through an independent train of logic, but it’s also extremely possible the concept of a pearl-soul connection first got into my head via Daovihi’s [Bond of Souls](https://archiveofourown.org/works/23686801) (a highly interesting Act 2 AU). I promise all pearls are treated with more dignity in that one. (At least so far…)
> 
> I’ve enjoyed all of these works, so give them a look if you think you might be interested! 
> 
> (I have more related works/inspirations to mention as well for this fic as a whole, but don’t want to spam everything at once, so I’m aiming to drop some more in notes on the last chapter. Or you can leave me a comment if you’re curious now!)
> 
> **tl;dr for whoever may want to skip Michelle hours:** by the end of this chapter, the gang has now completed a favor for Marina; Jasper has learned shapeshifting magic; and their quest reward was a vision revealing the existence and location of Erik’s sister.


End file.
